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Materialism Quotes

“Some people will insult your intelligence by suddenly being nice or nicer to you once you make it … or they think you have.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“In reality most human beings are not, to most human beings, more important than money.”

HumansImportantHumorFunnyQuotesHuman BeingsMoneyHumourHumanHumorousImportanceQuoteProfoundPhilosopherQuote Of The DaySignificantThoughtfulSatireMaterialismThought ProvokingDeepInsightfulAphorismSouth AfricaQuotationsAfricaInsignificantMaximsSayingsAdagesProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkUnimportantMaterialisticAxiomsAdageProverbSatiricalSayingEpigramsHuman BeingAfricanQuotationGnomeSatiristInconsequentialMaximEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAxiomDictumDictumsSouth AfricanSatiristsUnimportanceConsequential
Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“Sophia sat in meditation on the riverbank when a student bent down to place two enormous pearls at her feet as a gift. She opened her eyes to see the pearls. She picked one up, but dropped it. It rolled down the hill upon which she was sitting and into the river. The student chased after it and looked all afternoon, diving, coming up for air, diving back down. “Sophia,” he asked. “Could you show me where it went in? I can’t find it.” “Right there,” she said throwing the other pearl in the river.”

WisdomLetting GoMaterialismLetting Go Of Stuff
Book:For the Love of Sophia: Wisdom Stories from Around the World and Across the Ages
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“The shame and the downfall of a modern materialistic society is her inability to treasure, care for, admire, adore, cherish, value, revere, respect, uphold, uplift, protect, shield, defend, safeguard, treasure and love her children. I praise all the cultures of this world that naturally harbor and actively manifest these instincts. If a nation or if a population of people fails to recognize the excellent value and distinction of the lives of her children and is defective enough to have lost the capability of expressing and acting upon these instincts then there is nothing that can save that nation or those people. The prosperity of a people is not measured in banks, financial markets, economy and the death of its humanity is evident not through the loss of life but in the loss of love for its children.”

ChildrenNationsSocietyMaterialismChildMaterialistic SocietyPeoplesShame Of SocietyLove For ChildrenCare For ChildrenThe ChildrenValue Of A ChildDeath Of A NationValue Of Children
Author:C. JoyBell C.
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“The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.”

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Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible.”

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Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“It's about my own self-concept. Can I accept that I am worth looking for? Here lies the core of my spiritual struggle: the struggle against self-rejection, self-contempt, and self-loathing. It is a very fierce battle because the world and its demons conspire to make me think about myself as worthless, useless, and negligible. As long as I am kept “small,” I can easily be seduced to buy things, meet people, or go places that promise a radical change in self-concept even though they are totally incapable of bringing this about. But every time I allow myself to be thus manipulated or seduced, I will have still more reasons for putting myself down and seeing myself as the unwanted child.”

SpiritualitySelf EsteemTheologyMaterialismManipulationDemonsParablesSelf ConceptProdigal SonSelf Rejection
Book:The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming
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“Every nation can be summed up by a single book or play, or by a particular author. America is perhaps perfectly encapsulated by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is a book about luxury, enchantment, glamour, magic spells, aspiration, a vulgar Wonderland, insecurity, pretentiousness, bluffing, soullessness, fakes, phonies, emptiness, desperation, regrets, and impossible dreams. “Her voice is full of money,” says the narrator about the beguiling muse Daisy Buchanan. Could this not serve as the epitaph for the American Dream itself as it is finally laid to rest?”

BooksMaterialismThe Great GatsbyAmerican CharacterThe American DreamMammonism
Book:Character Wars: America's Failing Character
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“When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. {Letter to John Adams, from Monticello, 15 August 1820}”

ReasonAtheismMaterialismAngelsLockeTracyCreedJohn AdamsJohn LockeAdamsStewartAntoine Destutt De TracyAntoine Louis Claude DestuttComte De TracyDugald StewartJohn Stewart Mill
Book:Letters of Thomas Jefferson
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“What rationalism from d’Alembert to Dawkins is loath to acknowledge is that human rationality is a corporeal one. We think as we do roughly because of the kind of bodies we have, as Thomas Aquinas noted. Reason is authentically rational only when it is rooted in what lies beyond itself. It must find its home in what is other than reason, which is not to say in what is inimical to it. Any form of reason which grasps itself purely in terms of ideas, and then fumbles for some less cerebral way in which to connect with the sensory world, is debilitated from the outset.”

IdeasReasonMaterialismIdealismThe Body
Book:Culture and the Death of God
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“The “Empirical Fallacy” is that experience is knowledge when in fact it is just experience. A person could have infinite experiences and literally know nothing about what reality is. A person could perform a trillion observations and have no more clue about what reality is than someone performing divination in the ancient world, or a cockroach. It is not perceptualism that has led to humanity’s body of knowledge, it is conceptualism. Humanity doesn’t perceive better today, it conceives better, and that is purely thanks to mathematics, reason and logic.”

ReasonPhilosophyConceptsMaterialismRationalismEmpiricismA PrioriConceptualism
Book:Tractatus Logico-Mathematicus: How Mathematics Explains Reality
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“Empirical evidence is not what counts. Rational proof is the only acceptable criterion of truth. If you cannot provide a sufficient reason for an argument you make, you do not have an argument. Sensory evidence is not a sufficient reason. It is not an argument. Sensory evidence is simply raw data. A million people could provide a million different ways of interpreting it, hence it’s meaningless. It has nothing to do with proof. “Evidence” concerns an appearance from which inferences may be drawn. It concerns that which is obvious to the eye. Yet what does “obvious” mean? What is obvious about sensory data? Color blind people don’t know what “blue” is. Tetrachromats, with four cone types in the eye (cone cells are responsible for color vision, while rod cells code for monochromatic vision) see color radically differently from normal people (i.e. trichromats with three cone types). People with synesthesia have drastically different sensory experiences from normal people. So, everything about the senses is mired in ambiguity, uncertainty and subjectivity. These are no organs for truth, i.e. organs that show us the truth of a thing, exactly what it is and everything about it. We see things in our dreams even though our eyes are closed. How can we see without eyes, how can we sense without sense organs? What’s for sure is that scientific empiricism and materialism won’t be furnishing any answers.”

ReasonPhilosophyScienceEvidenceProofSensesMaterialismEmpiricismPhenomena
Book:Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason
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“The whole shtick of scientism revolves around sensory evidence. How many times must it be said that there is no such thing as self-explanatory sensory evidence? All evidence must be interpreted, and the interpretation is not a perceiving activity but a judging activity. The catastrophic error that worshipers of scientism (autistic sensing types) commit is that they privilege perceiving over judging. They believe that perception is the most important thing, and that judgment must be directed to the maximum degree possible at the perception, and minimize and indeed eliminate any reference to anything that has not been perceived. For worshipers of scientism, perception comes first, and judging is secondary, determined by perceiving. That is what empiricism is all about. It claims that all knowledge comes from experience, that there are no innate ideas, and it revolves around synthetic propositions and a posteriori knowledge. Rationalism, by total contrast, asserts that knowledge comes from logical, rational deduction and that innate ideas form the only secure basis for knowledge. It deals with analytic propositions and a priori knowledge.”

ReasonPhilosophyScienceMaterialismRationalismEmpiricismA PrioriA PosterioriRational ProofSensory Evidence
Book:Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason
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“It’s time to blow scientism out of the water. It’s time for judging to replace perceiving. Every time a worshiper of scientism says, “Where is your sensory evidence?” (a perceiving requirement), they should be met with, “Where is your sufficient reason?” (a judging requirement). That will create cognitive dissonance in them. They will go into meltdown. Where is the sufficient reason that scientific matter exists? According to Big Bang theory, it did not exist prior to the Big Bang, and neither did space and time. In other words, we know that there was an epoch when all the stuff of perceiving – matter, space, time and the physical senses –did not exist. However, all of the stuff of judgment – mathematics – did exist. This is why judging is primary and perceiving secondary, rather than the other way around. Get with the program. Scientism is an entirely false worldview. That’s a fact. The sole thing it gets right is that uses mathematics, which is the true basis of reality.”

ReasonScienceSensesMaterialismScientismRationalismEmpiricismBig BangOntological Mathematics
Book:Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason
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“By sacrificing half of his physical vision, Odin was able to gain higher vision. He traded lower perception for the ability to perceive the non-physical. Where will you go to find knowledge? What price will you pay? What sacrifice will you make? Knowledge is not for the faint-hearted. The highest knowledge is only for the gods. Are you one of them, or do you shun all difficult challenges and remain bound to the earth as a rotting carcass like all the others? The twilight of empiricism is here. Odin finally realized that he needed no eyes, and no senses at all, to understand reality. Reason and logic were all he required.”

ReasonVisionSacrificeMaterialismIdealismRationalismEmpiricismOdinKnowlege Is Power
Book:Holenmerism and Nullibism: The Two Faces of the Holographic Universe
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“Empiricists say, “Where’s your evidence?” In fact, our evidence is every piece of evidence ever gathered by science. Our disagreement is not with the evidence, it’s with the interpretation of the evidence. Every scientist interprets the evidence via the Meta Paradigm of empiricism and materialism, leading to wholly bizarre and irrational conclusions. The correct way to interpret the evidence is via rationalism and idealism. When has any scientific experiment ever refuted rationalism and idealism and proved the truth of empiricism and materialism? Scientists are so ignorant and philosophically illiterate that they don’t even realize they are engaged in interpretation rather than factuality.”

ReasonPhilosophyScienceEvidenceMaterialismInterpretationParadigmRationalismEmpiricismA Priori
Book:God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics
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“I do not think anyone can read the letters which passed between Clarke and [Anthony] Collins without admitting that Collins, who writes with wonderful Power and closeness of reasoning, has by far the best of the argument, so far as the possible materiality of the soul goes; and that in this battle the Goliath of Freethinking overcame the champion of what was considered orthodoxy.”

ReasonPowerArgumentMaterialismFreethoughtFreethinkingCollinsAnthony Collins
Author:Thomas Henry Huxley
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“Yes, I'm a materialist. I'm willing to be shown wrong, but that has not happened — yet. And I admit that the reason I'm unable to accept the claims of psychic, occult, and/or supernatural wonders is because I'm locked into a world-view that demands evidence rather than blind faith, a view that insists upon the replication of all experiments — particularly those that appear to show violations of a rational world — and a view which requires open examination of the methods used to carry out those experiments.”

ReasonScienceAtheismEvidenceParanormalMaterialismSuperstitionNaturalismScientific MethodExperiment
Author:James Randi
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“Nostalgia is an excessive sentimentality for the past, for home. It is associated with a yearning to return to a happy and safe period in your life. The word comes from nóstos, meaning “homecoming”, and álgos, meaning “pain” or “ache”. It’s all about the “good old days”, and “the good times”. Conservatism revolves around nostalgia. All right wingers are nostalgic, and suffer from future shock and future fear. Science is about extreme nostalgia for the material atoms of the ancient Greeks. Materialism is entirely dead in the era of quantum mechanics, yet scientists go on believing in matter anyway. They are highly conservative individuals unwilling to contemplate leaving the home materialism has provided for them. The last thing they want is to end up in the Unknown Land of Mind, where thought, not matter, is core reality. That would ruin everything for the scientific materialists and empiricists.”

ScienceChangeConservativeNostalgiaResistanceMaterialismParadigmRight WingHomesickReactionary
Book:Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason
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“Our lives are mere flashes of light in an infinitely empty universe. In 12 years of education the most important lesson I have learned is that what we see as “normal” living is truly a travesty of our potential. In a society so governed by superficiality, appearances, and petty economics, dreams are more real than anything anything in the “real world”. Refuse normalcy. Beauty is everywhere, love is endless, and joy bleeds from our everyday existence. Embrace it. I love all of you, all my friends, family, and community. I am ceaselessly grateful from the bottom of my heart for everyone. The only thing I can ask of you is to stay free of materialism. Remember that every day contains a universe of potential; exhaust it. Live and love so immensely that when death comes there is nothing left for him to take. Wealth is love, music, sports, learning, family and freedom. Above all, stay gold.”

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Author:Dominic Owen Mallary
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“It was a night of early spring, The winter-sleep was scarcely broken; Around us shadows and the wind Listened for what was never spoken. Though half a score of years are gone, Spring comes as sharply now as then— But if we had it all to do It would be done the same again. It was a spring that never came; But we have lived enough to know That what we never have, remains; It is the things we have that go.”

WisdomRegretSpringMaterialismProject Gutenburg
Author:Sara Teasdale
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“[Letter to his wife, Natalia Sedova] In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness. For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth. Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

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Author:Leon Trotsky
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“Our planet is about ... billions of years old. So far, the earliest finds of modern human skeletons come from Africa, which date to nearly 200,000 years ago. We have made such an advanced technological progress, but here we are today, still condemning women based on their sexuality and celebrate it every year. This very 'social' movement is the enemy of women and humanity in general for it is feeding the labels, categorizations, divisions, and inequalities for somewhat 100 years now. Since its inception somewhere in the early 1900s, women were finally given(external) 'rights' allowing us to work and even vote. There used to be and quite outrageously still is a huge inequality in the functions/roles of men and women in homes, workplaces and in civil society. Women were then seen as inferior and still are today, mainly because economic achievement has become one of the most important foundation and determinant in the worthiness/value of an individual. "Womens day" pretends to celebrate women but the opposite is true. Through its systematized, preplanned and preconstructed feminist surrogate, women have been slowly but steadily stripped off a secure, nurturing sacred and honoured image as wives, mothers, but above all as procreating human beings representing life and its backbone, are turned into cheap, brainless, sexual objects and hostages of the economy. And whenever the tyranny of materialism and capitalism ends, and we the people as a whole recognize the inherent, deep rootedness and nature of human beings, will the female sex be liberated from feminism.”

WomenHuman BeingsFeminismCapitalismSacredMaterialismMothersWomens RightsHumanity And SocietyWivesPropaganda QuotesWomens StrengthInternational Womens DayWomensdayProcreating Human BeingsBraindeadDeeprootednessFeminism Is The New CommunismFeminist SurrogateHostages Of The EconomyNurteringOld Communist PropagandaSexual ObjectsSocial Categorizations
Author:Nadja Sam
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“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them. The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears "natural" today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric that accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth. We cannot go on living like this. The little crash of 2008 was a reminder that unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy: sooner or later it must fall prey to its own excesses and turn again to the state for rescue. But if we do no more than pick up the pieces and carry on as before, we can look forward to greater upheavals in years to come.”

SocietyGreedMaterialismPrivatizationSocial Democracy2008 Financial CrisisTony Judt
Book:Ill Fares the Land
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“Everything he said seemed exceedingly obvious, and undoubtedly true, but I felt sure that something more obscure, more frightening lurked in the hearts of human beings. Greed did not cover it, nor did vanity. It was simply a combination of lust and greed. I wasn't sure what it was, but I felt that there was something inexplicable at the bottom of human society that was not reducible to economics.”

SocietyEconomicsGreedLustMaterialism
Book:No Longer Human
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“You are too timid for me. You care too much about what other people think. But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you'll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try. You say you want to travel the path, but you don't want to sacrifice anything to that end. Money, fame, power, lavishness, or carnal pleasure - whatever it is that one holds most dear in life, one should dispose of that first.”

SpiritualitySacrificeTravelMaterialismSuperficialityThe Path
Book:The Forty Rules of Love
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“It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me... And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die!" "So what's it all about? What's it for? It's not possible. It's not possible that life could have been as senseless and sickening as this. And if it has really been as sickening and senseless as this why do I have to die, and die in agony? There's something wrong. Maybe I didn't live as I should have done?" came the sudden thought. "But how can that be when I did everything properly?" he wondered, instantly dismissing as a total impossibility the one and only solution to the mystery of life and death.”

DeathSpiritualityMeaning Of LifeMaterialism
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“​The defence of the principle of true justice will entail denouncing what is today continually promoted as ‘social justice’, a justice that serves only the lowest classes of society (the so-called ‘working classes’) and works to the detriment of other classes, effectively leading to injustice. The true state will also be hierarchical, especially because it will be able to acknowledge and create respect for the hierarchy of true values, giving primacy to values of a higher order, not material or utilitarian ones, and admitting relevant, legitimate inequalities or differences of social positions, opportunities and dignity. The true state will reject as aberrant the formula of the state of labour, whether or not this state is presented as ‘national’.​”

JusticeSocial JusticeEqualityInequalityMaterialism
Book:Fascism Viewed from the Right
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“But what you’re calling poetry is what everything is. It’s not even poetry — it’s seeing. These materialists are blind. You told me they say space is infinite. Where do they see that in space?” And I, disconcerted: “But don’t you think of space as infinite? Can’t you conceive of space as infinite?” “I don’t conceive of anything as being infinite. How could I conceive of anything as being infinite?” “But, man,” I said, “Imagine space. Beyond that space is more space, and beyond that more, and then more, and more... It never ends...“ “Why?” asked my master Caeiro.”

LifeGodRealityPoetryUniverseNatureSpaceExistenceSeeingEternityClarityMaterialismFeelingInfinityPaganismIt Is What It IsPantheismNo Mind
Author:Álvaro de Campos
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