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Materialism Quotes

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Materialism Quotes

“When selecting a one-night stand, a heterosexual woman who is materialistic is a trillion times more likely to choose a sexually unattractive poor man who seems rich over a sexually attractive rich man who seems poor.”

“Your life is not meant to be used in exchange for mundane things like houses and cars but to purchase greatness.”

“The death of a billionaire is worth more to the media than the lives of a billion poor people.”

“The second most dangerous thing about money is that it leaves most of the people who have a lot of it with the unshakable belief that they are intelligent and well informed. The most dangerous thing about it is that it leaves most of the people who do not have a lot of money with the very same belief.”

“And then one day you realise that if you want to be rich, you'd have to give away almost everything you own.”

“KODO SAWAKI ~ To practice the buddha way is not to let our minds wander but to become one with what we’re doing. This is called zanmai (or samadhi) and shikan (or “just doing”). Eating rice isn’t preparation for shitting; shitting isn’t preparation for making manure. And yet these days people think that high school is preparation for college and college is preparation for a good job.”

“It's not enough, and so limiting, to teach the simplistic value of a designer's material wear. Give children the gift of values that will last far beyond [a] fad's temporal popularity.”

“I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me ever more conscious of this gulf. Although modern American capitalism had greatly reduced the gap through social reforms, there was still need for a better distribution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system: capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity—thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.”

“But, even without kings, a confederation of merchants have always self-assembled. These Gogs have always peacocked, dressed up for special occasions, put on a bit of bling to elicit envy, all within the warm bubble of wealth—albeit outside of Abrahamic-thinking. (Re 21:15) Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 5”

“When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.”

“Poverty is a funny phenomenon. It is always defined financially and always relative to what other people earn. It is possible to be extremely happy despite having little money and being officially categorised as poverty-stricken. You can also be really unhappy despite earning a high salary. Those who always want something more will always live in poverty, regardless of how much they earn, while those who are content with what they have will always feel they have an abundance. Most poverty in the UK isn't material poverty, it's spiritual poverty, a state of mind in which fulfilment comes only from the pursuit of material gain.”

“15. “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1Timothy 6:10, KJV). That’s why Jesus issues more warnings about materialism and wealth than any other sin. Obviously, it takes a steady hand to hold a full cup.”

“At some level, it is even tempting to think that since strict materialism is among the most incoherent of superstitions - one that has never really asked the question of the being of things in any depth or with any persistence, or one that has at best attempted to conjure that question away as a fallacy of grammar - it is incapable of imagining any conception of God more sophisticated than its own. The materialist encounters an instance of unjust suffering and, by a sort of magical thinking, concludes from the absence of any immediately visible moral order that there must be nothing transcendent of material causality, in much the same way that certain of our more remote, primitive ancestors might have seen a flash of lightning in the sky and concluded that some god must have flung it from on high. In neither case does the conclusion follow from the evidence (though in the latter case the reasoning is somewhat more rigorous); and in neither case is the god at issue much more than an affective myth.”

“Cyber bullying occurs online daily. Most don't consider their actions or words to be bullying. Here's a few clues that you're a cyber bully. (1) You post information about someone in order to ruin their character. (2) You post threats to someone. (3) You tag someone in vulgar degrading posts. (4) You post any information intended to harm or shame another individual seeking to gain attention. Then, you are a cyber bully and need to get some help.”

“We're a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience -- among so many other traits that are ugly and harmful. We're combative, competitive, petty, and suffer from one fatal flaw that I can never get my head around. We recognize behavior in others that makes us insane, while turning right around and doing the exact thing to someone else.”

“The material world is a sad place to be. People keep trying to attain that perfect state of happiness throughout their lives, acting upon thoughts that show them where the temporary dopamine fix is, but most of them are really sad inside. Surprisingly, most people choose to overcome sadness, they feel if they look at the greener side the sadness will vanish. But the sadness is always there. Otherwise there would be no motivation to be happy.”

“When he looked up some of the friends with whom he had attended college, he realized with a shock that he no longer talked the same language. They spoke freely of their problems and assumed they were his also. Had he noticed how many young people there were now who seemed to find in life no challenge? And how did he handle the growing materialism in which so many people feel no need of faith and consider the church almost an anachronism? And Mark answered that in an Indian village the challenge was obvious to all, to stay alive men had to depend on each other, and that everyone came to church, even the agnostics and the atheists. They came out of respect for the church itself and for the man who served it, and because there were few settlers in a six thousand square mile area who had not been done kindness by the church, its hospital ship, its men, and repaid it.”