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Materialism Quotes

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Materialism Quotes

“Sometimes we can't see the relevance of Jesus Christ until we become dissatisfied with the world and realise that there must be more to life than working 9 to 5, buying and accumulating expensive 'things'and being attractive to members of the opposite sex.”

“I never said it was easy to find your place in this world, but I’m coming to the conclusion that if you seek to please others, you will forever be changing because you will never be yourself, only fragments of someone you could be. You need to belong to yourself, and let others belong to themselves too. You need to be free and detached from things and your surroundings. You need to build your home in your own simple existence, not in friends, lovers, your career or material belongings, because these are things you will lose one day. That’s the natural order of this world. This is called the practice of detachment.”

“Getting through life without a lot of money, possessions, and/or friends is admirable, especially if it is by choice.”

“A woman who holds her head up too high, is trying to breathe from her own pollution.”

“She felt the cold blast from the sterile air conditioning on her bare arms and thighs, as she ambled down the center of the shopping complex's ground floor. The scene was a swirl of candy bright lights--the Victoria's Secret fuchsia signboard, signboards which lured one to purchase "confidence," or "sexual appeal," or whatever it was that was being advertised--the fluorescent lights in each store, contrasting with the shiny, black-tiled walls and eye-catching speckled marble tiles on the ground. One could lick the floor--the tiles were spotless, clean like the fake air she was breathing in, like the atoms and cells in her that were decaying in stale neglect.”

“A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization. Everyone is hypnotized by production and comfort -- sewage system, elevator, bathroom, washing machine. This state of affairs, which arose out of a struggle against poverty, overshoots its ultimate goal -- the liberation of humanity from material cares -- and becomes an obsessive image hanging over the present. Between love and a garbage disposal, young people of all countries have made their choice and prefer the garbage disposal. A complete and sudden change of spirit has become essential, by bringing to light forgotten desires and creating entirely new ones. And by an intensive propaganda in favor of these desires. Gilles Ivain (aka Ivan Chtcheglov)”

“Suppose you woke up one morning to discover that you were the last person on earth. [...] In the situation described, you could satisfy many material desires that you can't satisfy in our actual world. You could have the car of your dreams. You could even have a showroom full of expensive cars. You could have the house of your dreams - or live in a palace. You could wear very expensive clothes. You could acquire not just a big diamond ring but the Hope Diamond itself. The interesting question is this: without people around, would you still want these things?”

“Joy of Conscience (The Sonnet) Conscience brings joy, Conscience brings relief. It's a different kind of joy, sanctified by bouts of grief. Conscience causes content, unsurpassed by material excitement. Only through conscientious moderation, shall we overcome shallow derangement. Materials are needed for sustenance, beyond that point it becomes poison. Cluttering the mind with toxic waste, it separates the human from human. Conscience brings joy, untainted by shallow glee. Surrounded by ritual compromise, conscience alone can set us free.”

“It’s the poet we love in Caeiro, not the philosopher. What we really get from these poems is a childlike sense of life, with all the direct materiality of the child’s mind, and all the vital spirituality of hope and increase that exist in the body and soul of nescient childhood. Caeiro’s work is a dawn that wakes us up and quickens us; a more that material, more than anti-spiritual dawn. It’s an abstract effect, pure vacuum, nothingness.”

“Thought, too, while scattering its traces, leaves the literalness of the world intact, leaves intact the pure literalness of objects, though it sends their meaning up in smoke. Shadowing the world - following the word like its shadow to cover up its tracks and to show that, behind its supposed ends, it is going nowhere. It is in this way that thought connects up with the event of the world - not with the occurrence of a totality that is nowhere to be found, but with the occurrence of the world as it is, in its unpredictable coming-to-pass. It is in this way that we attain to the literalness, the material imagining, of the world, by the elimination of whatever obstacle may be between the image and the gaze.”

“Diese jungen Menschen hatten keine Wünsche, keine Überzeugungen, geschweige denn Ideale, sie strebten keinen bestimmten Beruf an, wollten weder politischen Einfluss noch eine glückliche Familie, keine Kinder, keine Hausiere und keine Heimat, und sehnten sich ebenso wenig nach Abenteuern und Revolten wie nach der Ruhe und dem Frieden des Althergebrachten. Überdies hatten sie aufgehört, Spaß als einen Wert zu betrachten. Freizeit und Nichtfreizeit waren gleichermaßen anstrengend und unterschieden sich in erster Linie durch die Frage, ob man Geld verdiente oder ausgab. Hobbys zum Totschlagen der Zeit waren überflüssig, da die Zeit auch von selbst verging. Fernsehen war langweilig, die Literaturszene tot, und im Kino liefen seit Jahren nur Varianten auf drei oder vier verschiedener Filme. Diskotheken waren etwas für Liebhaber von Dummheit und schlechter Musik, und auf Schostakowitsch konnte man nicht tanzen. Diese Jugend hatte aufgehört, sich für industriell geschneiderte Moden, Identitäten, Heldenfiguren und Feindbilder zu interessieren. Weniger als jede Generation vor ihrer bildete sie eine Generation. Sie war einfach da, die Sippschaft eines interimistischen Zeitalters.”

“You may show what atomic groupings are necessary in order that life may emerge out of matter, sentience out of life, or intellect out of sentience; but you cannot thereby reduce life, let alone sentient life and intellectual life, to terms of matter; you have only succeeded in tabulating the material coefficients of things which are not themselves material. I do not mean that Mr Russell would not be able to put up a case against this argument; I only complain that he simplified his task by pretending to misunderstand what the argument was; by assuming that it was merely physical when as a matter of fact it is metaphysical.”