Materialism Quotes

Ellen Goodman

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.

Jess C. Scott

If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead.

Stephen King

But in the wake of 'Bullet,' all the guys wanted to know was, 'How's it doing? How's it selling?' How to tell them I didn't give a flying fuck how it was doing in the marketplace, that what I cared about was how it was doing in the reader's heart?

LeeAnn Taylor

There is no ownership. There is only stewardship.

Tim Crawshaw

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.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When a man's girlfriend's parents ask him what it is that he does for a living: they’re not really concerned about him; they’re concerned about their daughter’s tummy.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When a man's bank balance becomes too small, his woman flees. For a man to do the same, his woman's body - or vagina - has to do the opposite.

Kurt Vonnegut

Q: What is wrong with the world?
A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.

Tim Fargo

Don't envy what people have, emulate what they did to have it.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To some women, a job plays the role of a man. To most women, a man plays the role of a job.

Ashly Lorenzana

Nothing in the tangible word that isn't living has any value beyond a dollar amount. Considering that dollars can only buy more tangible and inanimate objects, it would seem a far more worthwhile goal to instead learn to place value on the treasures of the mind. Memories, knowledge and skill together are the only things we will ever actually own.

Ernst F. Schumacher

The real problems of our planet are not economic or technical, they are philosophical. The philosophy of unbridled materialism is being challenged by events.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

*I’m hustling* is a low self-esteem having man’s way of saying *I’m unemployed,* when answering a seemingly materialistic woman’s question as to what he does for a living.

Mitch Albom

But I do know we’re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.

Harold Bell Wright

Eyes blinded by the fog of things
cannot see truth.
Ears deafened by the din of things
cannot hear truth.
Brains bewildered by the whirl of things
cannot think truth.
Hearts deadened by the weight of things
cannot feel truth.
Throats choked by the dust of things
cannot speak truth.

Plato

....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)

Alain De Botton

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

Barry Unsworth

The successful cannot be unhappy - it was a contradiction in terms.

Donald L. Hicks

Whether you buy a new TV, or car, (etc.) or any other “material” thing is often “immaterial” to God.

H. Rider Haggard

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.

H.P. Lovecraft

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred
I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism - religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.

George Bernard Shaw

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.

Natalie Vellacott

The more things we accumulate, the more cluttered our lives become, and the more stressed we feel as we are compelled to think about them. Life is about people not about things.

Sam Rayburn

Poverty only tries men's souls. It is loneliness that breaks the heart.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Most women have low standards. All they strive for is a highly paid man.

Carl Sagan

[When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996:]

If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses.

Benjamin Disraeli

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.

Robert J. Sawyer

There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?

Ruth Benedict

Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.

Patti Smith

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010)

Michael Connelly

Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

Funny how in a material world full of pundits and economists obsessed with assets and liabilities -personally, economically and globally - few speak about the greatest of all these…YOU.

Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Material wealth do not last forever, but that which probably lasts forever is the wealth of intelligence and creativity.

Faraaz Kazi

Our lives are defined by fear from the very time we are born to the time we bid adieu to this material world.

Thomas Mann

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

Alistair Begg

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

Randy Alcorn

To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn't glorify people, we must hear each other's stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For the most expensive way to realize an orgasm, men open their wallets. For the cheapest, they close their eyes.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A civilized woman's demands: A man who will (1) make her come … sometimes; but (2) pay the bills … at all times.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Huge biceps are an unattractive-uneducated-underpaid man's last attempt to be seen as worthy of dating, or, sleeping with.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When we see a good-looking woman with a not-so-good-looking man, we assume that the man must have a good bank balance. When we see a good-looking man with a not-so-good-looking woman, we assume that she must be good in bed.

Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

The unity of Nigeria will only come if we overcome and overgrow tribe, materialism and selfish human nature.

Edward Witten

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

James Hervey Johnson

Man is a product of nature, a part of the Universe. The Universe is operated under exact natural laws. Man is a product of millions of years of evolution. He adapts himself to the laws of nature or he perishes.

Li Zhi Fang

...in principle, one can predict everything in the universe solely from physical laws. Thus, the long-standing 'first cause' problem intrinsic in cosmology has been finally dispelled.

John Muir

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news

Jess C. Scott

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…

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

the real is coherent and probable because it is real, and not real because it is coherent...

Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Thoughts don't become things; thoughts ARE things.

Arthur Erickson

After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared.

Alice Walker

The life of my people is to remember forever; each head granary is full. The life of your people is to forget: your thing granaries ("museums"), and not yourselves, are full.

Sol Luckman

He knew perfectly well (even if he wasn’t inclined to admit it) that the material body had a spiritual aspect. He knew that “spirit,” however explained, was real, because of his own undeniable experiences - which, though he might suppress them, he couldn’t altogether erase from memory.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Fighting physically signifies spiritual weakness.

Vironika Tugaleva

Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set ourselves on the fruitless mission of filling the gaping hole within us with material things. Blindly, we consume more and more, believing we are hungry for more food, status, or money, yet really we are hungry for connection.

Bill Blass

I have a firm belief in such things as, you know, the water, the Earth, the trees and sky. And I'm wondering, it is increasingly difficult to find those elements in nature, because it's nature I believe in rather than some spiritual thing.

Amit Kalantri

Your shyness alone will bring you more emotional and material losses than all of your other negative attributes.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A fast car can make women 'like' a man; and a man 'like' women … fast.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Girls like well-built boys. Women love well-paid men.

Frank R. Zindler

Philosophically, I am a logical empiricist and materialist, and I am a veteran of over 400 radio and TV interviews and debates. I am a Christ-myth advocate and am pursuing research into how Christianity could have begun without a historical Jesus of Nazareth. I am married with one daughter and three grandchildren.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Money cannot buy you love. But it sure can buy you things that some people will love you for having.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A broke man’s lover doesn’t feel ‘loved’ on her Birthday, Christmas, and, on Valentine’s Day.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If every lover was treated like they matter - everyday; valentine’s day wouldn’t be so 'special.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In a materialistic society, there’s no such a thing as a ‘romantic’ broke man.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A wedding is a ceremony men fund with money they know they don’t have … to prove the love they think they have.

Michael Bassey Johnson

It is good to stay in a peaceful poverty than to stay in a painful wealth.

John Lennon

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

Aristophanes

You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.

Shira Tamir

If everyone wanted peace as much as they want a new iPhone, then there would be peace.

Randy Alcorn

...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.

Nenia Campbell

There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.

Leland Dirks

You can’t really, truly love a thing. Love is only possible between beings or groups of beings. Love of a thing doesn’t work because it can’t love back.

H. Rider Haggard

And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.

Fabian Gustafsson

The one who lives solely with the many, solely with the best, lives only as briefly as that which he owns, passes his tests.
The one living by his actions, and by his deeds, will live his full life owning the average, happily having them, filling his needs.

Bertrand Russell

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Chuck Palahniuk

The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.

Erich Fromm

The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.

Wallace Stegner

To have so little, and it of so little value, was to be quaintly free.

Sophie Kinsella

We're all to driven by materialism. Obsessed with success. With money. With trying to impress people who'll never be impressed.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Instead of loving people and using money, people often love money and use people.

Pat Conroy

You have to pay for this view (onto which he looks while writing), so our expenses keep us pretty motivated to write. It's a vicious cycle.

Michael Bassey Johnson

My friend is my friend, even if he wears rag, even if he wasn't born with a silver spoon, even if nobody wants to be his friend, i will hurt his critics by remaining his friend.

Akutra-Ramses Atenosis Cea

Every year I collect a select amount of material possessions (baseball cards, coins, famous paraphernalia) to pass on to my children. In two or more generations they should have a small fortune of 'ancient' famous items.

Diego Rivera

I knew how one climbing the mountain of worldly success can slip down into the river below without being conscious of the descent till he is already drowning.

Steven Pinker

The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.

George Bernard Shaw

Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money you have, the more soul you have. Young people nowadays know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car.

Francis Bacon

Money is a great servant but a bad master.

Jess C. Scott

You can never have too much money.

H.L. Mencken

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

Eustace Conway

Just imagine if you took all the money you've spent on these things and traveled around the world with it, instead, or bought books and read them. Think about how much you would know about life.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A church service starts and ends with a prayer. A magazine starts and ends with an advert.

Alexander Pope

We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives them to."

[Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1727]

Woody Guthrie

Do Re Mi
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see,
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi

Thomas Guthrie

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

[Man and the Gospel (1865)]

William Gibson

That’s what money will buy you, in America,” Brown had said, firmly. “People say Americans are materialistic. But do you know why?” “Why?” asked Milgrim, more concerned with this uncharacteristically expansive mode of expression on Brown’s part. “Because they have better stuff,” Brown had replied. “No other reason.

Anthony Liccione

It's not what you have on the outside that glitters in light, it's what you have on the inside that shines in the dark.

Henry David Thoreau

No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Capitalism has turned human beings into commodities. To the owner of a restaurant: the cook and a bag of potatoes are equally important.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A man’s bank balance is the new penis size.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There’s a correlation between the number of digits on a man’s bank balance, and, the number of things that his woman is willing to forgive him for.

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