Materialism Quotes

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.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone.

~ E.t.a. Hoffmann

It was a night of early spring,The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;Around us shadows and the windListened 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 doIt would be done the same again.It was a spring that never came;But we have lived enough to knowThat what we never have, remains;It is the things we have that go.

~ Sara Teasdale

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

~ 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.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves.

~ Alain De Botton

The Master said, “A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with.”(Analects 4.9)

~ Confucius

The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.

~ Confucius

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.

~ Philip Slater

We dabble in many things; but the one great real idea of our age, not copied from any other, not pretended, not raised to life by any conjuration, is the Much Making of Things – not the making of beautiful things, not the joy of spending living energy in creative work; rather the shameless, merciless driving and over-driving, wasting and draining of the last bit of energy, only to produce heaps and heaps of things – things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best largely unnecessary.

~ Voltairine De Cleyre

To possess possessions, a man will sell himself to have what another has, but it never dawns on him ~ that the more he gets, the less he keeps of himself.

~ Rius

Communism in a capitalist world requires eliminating the hope of the citizens for owning what others own.

~ Osman Doluca

Because there is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box—Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

o. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

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

An idea? An idea won't get you nothing but another idea. You need money, cash, to make anything happen in this doggone world.

~ Nathan Mccall

Being self-owned is a state of mind.

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

He would henceforth worship and defend the very reason for Joy, the Almighty Maker of Joy.

~ Philip Zaleski

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

~ Rick Perlstein

Carnal love is the love of table, not of the host.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Winnie the Pooh finds comfort in counting his pots of honey, and Rabbit finds comfort in knowing where his relations are – even if he doesn't need them at the moment.

~ A.a. Milne

I love the quaint saying of a dying man, who exclaimed, I have no fear of going home; I have sent all before me; God's finger is on the latch of my door, and I am ready for Him to enter.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Charity fits the economy of scarcity, because it supports the blasphemous myth that the rich are rich because they deserve to be, and their riches are theirs to deal with as they please. With such charity, we are not worthy to tell the story of manna in the wilderness, to pretend to eat together at the Lord’s Supper, or claim the Year of Jubilee as our own.

~ Michael Rhodes

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

~ H.w. Brands

What's a man worth without love ? $.89 worth of chemicals. Hawkeye Pierce

~ M*A*S*H Episode Guide Team

Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power.

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

The narrator refers to a character as an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them.

~ Pearl S. Buck

you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes.

~ David Brooks

On Christ's attitude toward His disciples: If I gave away My big all to get to you, can you give away your little all to follow Me?

~ Timothy J. Keller

I am learning that man can live profoundly without masses of things.

~ Richard Byrd

She chose to look at her surroundings where they think missionary mind-set.

~ Jeremy Camp

Freedom from anxiety is characterized by three inner attitudes. If what we have we received as a gift, and if what we have is to be cared for by God, and if what we have is available to others, then we will possess freedom from anxiety.

~ Richard J. Foster

The Must be worthless by our estimation or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

~ John Calvin

The one single use of things which we call our own is that they might be his who hath need of them.

~ Thomas Hughes

I know that certain minds would regard as audacious the idea of relating the laws which preside over the play of our organs to those laws which govern inanimate bodies; but, although novel, this truth is none the less incontestable. To hold that the phenomena of life are entirely distinct from the general phenomena of nature is to commit a grave error, it is to oppose the continued progress of science.

~ François Magendie

How much does he lack himself who must have many things?

~ Sen No Rikyū