Materialism Quotes - Page 2

Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on the basis of insufficient knowledge, because the knowledge supplied seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible.("The Wendigo")

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

That’s sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real.” Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. “Real love, real friends, real body parts…

The networks at their worst (were) at once greedy and timid.

After losing faith, even an atheist feels a yawning void in his soul that needs filling; there is nothing imaginable that he can fill with it. It was all along meant to be filled with the sacred, with the unknown and unknowable power. That's the curse or blessing of humanity

Bread is a second cause; the LORD Himself is the first source of our sustenance. He can work without the second cause as well as with it; and we must not tie Him down to one mode of operation. Let us not be too eager after the visible, but let us look to the invisible God.

It's utter arrogance to think that we can know what god ought to be or do. If we don't understand we must continue our search or recognize our ignorance

Silently, sadly, the earth covered life coinage is read both ways; so much vs. so little and…so little vs. …so much!

There is a powerful relationship between our true spiritual condition and our attitude and actions concerning money and possessions.

Fidelity surveyed a group with at least $1 million investment assets excluding real estate and retirement. 42% of them did not FEEL wealthy.

Worth is not something you can buy for $39.99, nor something you can lose with 10 extra pounds. Self-judging people make good consumers. Start a revolution. Love yourself.

The sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse, which every individual and generation finds in existence as something given, is the real basis of what the philosophers have conceived as "substance" and "essence of man," and what they have deified and attacked: a real basis which is not in the least disturbed, in its effect and influence on the development of men, by the fact that these philosophers revolt against it as "self-consciousness" and the "Unique.

Whatever thing a man gets quickly enraged about is his idol, and whatever thing he makes his idol becomes his religion.

A thief is one who insists on sharing his victimhood.

Stuff comes and stuff goes and the only thing that matters in the end is who you are inside, what you do and what make it leaves in the world.

Since science is essentially objective, involving the study of how things actually are, "materialism" would therefore seem to be its antithesis, since its starting point is the desire to impose upon the natural world a particular and limited way of looking at it.

Most employees don’t really want to be highly-paid; they just want to earn more than their peers, and, more importantly, more than their neighbours.

We are not less because we have less

The wisdom of nature continues to teach humanity that the material...is immaterial.

Lifting your eyes from the things of this world is an activity that must begin WHERE YOU ARE.

Being self-owned is a state of mind.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth "home." Before you know it, I am calling luxeries "needs" and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don't think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set.

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.

Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.

I have nothing to lose. I keep all my valuables in a safe.

The job wouldn't be just put the summer, but for a long time, as long as she could see ahead. Once they were used to the money coming in it would be impossible to do without again.

The leaders of thought and of action grope theirway forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly,that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of valueonly as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes fromdevotion to loftier ideals.

Hitherto men have always formed wrong ideas about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relations according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. The products of their brains have got out of their hands. They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations.

There is nothing behind the curtains of religions, people put there whatever their imaginations can fathom

If a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word Gods has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of natural, the source of known causes ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods; thus giving a vague definition to an unknown cause, at which either his idleness, or his limited knowledge, obliges him to stop. When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon, the novelty or the extent of which strikes him with wonder, but of which his ignorance precludes him from unravelling the true cause, or which he believes the natural powers with which he is acquainted are inadequate to bring forth; does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?

Hold material goods and wealth on a flat palm and not in a clenched fist.

...if I try to make only enough money for my family' immediate needs, it may violate Scripture. ...Even though earning just enough to meet the needs of my family may seem nonmaterialistic, it's actually selfish when I could earn enough to care for others as well.

Man would rather be loved for what he has, than be hated for what he lacks.

We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

The task of defending capitalism was still important to leave to the capitalists.

When the marketplace became crowded with scores of similar products that mostly did what they were supposed to do, companies focused less on selling that product, and more on selling you a relationship with the product, and a means of announcing your own identity.

Carlyle's genius was many-sided. He touched and ennobled the national life at all points. He lifted a whole generation of young men out of the stagnating atmosphere of materialism and dead orthodoxy into the region of the ideal. With the Master of Balliol, we believe that 'no English writer has done more to elevate and purify our ideas of life and to make us conscious that the things of the spirit are real, and that in the last resort there is no other reality.

The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.

Listen.Do you see that you can’t hear snowfall?Look.Do you sensethat you can’t see love?Touch.Do you graspthat you can’t catch poems?Try.Smell this glass. Go on taste this cloud.These material senses won’t get you far untilyou feelthe velvet glove caress your soul.

For the genuine materialist there is no fundamental, but only a gradual, an “evolutionary” difference, between man and a pest, a noxious insect

....I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best.(tr Jowett)

[A]nd you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestow

I am thankful that I can be thankful, for if thankfulness did not exist my heart would be irretrievably imprisoned by the crazed twins of acquisition and possession, and my soul would exist as a forever slave to greed.

We always want what is not ours. It’s intriguing. We think if we can just get that, we’ll finally be happy. The lure of what we do not have is deceptive.True freedom, however, is found in being content with what we already have. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine being whole, complete, fulfilled - content with what you already have? It sounds too good to be true.Utter satisfaction? That is freedom.That is what everyone is searching for.Where, though, can you find this kind of contentment?I've noticed that the more I’ve come to know Jesus, the less I've desired material things.Materialism is what happens when you find your joy in things. Contentment is what happens when you find your joy in Jesus. They’re complete opposites. You can easily differentiate a materialistic person from a content person.

Materialism wars against our souls in a twofold manner. First, it makes us discontent and envious of others. Second, it leads us to pamper and indulge our bodies so that we become soft and lazy. As we become soft and lazy in our bodies, we tend to become soft and lazy spiritually. When Paul talked about making his body his slave, so that after having preached to others he himself would not be disqualified, he was not thinking about physical disqualification, but spiritual. He knew well that physical softness inevitably leads to spiritual softness. When the body is pampered and indulged, the instincts and passions of the body tend to get the upper hand and dominate our thoughts and actions. We tend to do not what we should do, but what we want to do, as we follow the cravings of our sinful nature.

I am obsessed with not being obsessed with acquiring material things.

John D Rockefeller read his Bible religiously, but kept his ledger in a different drawer.

All religions are man-made God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.

Money is a great servant but a bad master.

Why does a steward steal? He steals because he's not sure he'll always remain with his master and wants to make his future secure.

Nothing humbles a rich man better than a poor man that isn’t willing to do ‘anything’ for money.

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

The way we contemplate technology on the horizon says much about who we are and who we are willing to become.

In the long run, success or failure will beconditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation.

There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved. And there is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing.

Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.

For the old people in my family—Mummy, the aunties, Granddad—the accumulation of beautiful objects is a life goal.Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.Wins what? is what I’d like to know.

Once employed, the employed's friends are reduced to creatures that he only sees when he has a new problem, or, something new to show off.

Adams was in a hurry and ordered his horse drawn carriage to wait for him in front of his house. The horses were spooked before he got in the carriage, and the carriage was destroyed in an accident. Pondering what could have happened to him , Adams retreated to Psalm 20's injunctions against trusting in chariots and horses.