Materialism Quotes - Page 14

• My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.

  Wendell Berry

  Life, Positive, Passion

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.75, Counterpoint

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• A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

  Lionel Shriver

  Jealousy, Thinking, People

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• I see that any materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.

  Oscar Wilde

  Soul, Body, Flesh

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• The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die.

  Albert Camus

  Reality, Thinking, Ideas

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.98, Vintage

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• Materialism is a fruitless attempt to find meaning outside of God. When we try to find ultimate fulfillment in a person other than Christ or a place other than heaven, we become idolaters. According to Scripture, materialism is not only evil; it is tragic and pathetic.

  Randy Alcorn

  Evil, Heaven, Trying

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• If we understand the dangers of materialism, it will help liberate us to experience the joys of Christ-centered stewardship. Jesus speaks of the "deceitfulness of wealth" . The psalmist warns, "Though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them" . The dangers of materialism are far-reaching. We should not think that we're immune to the value-changing nature of wealth.

  Randy Alcorn

  Jesus, Heart, Thinking

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• The rise of the prosperity gospel is one of the great challenges to the true message of Jesus Christ. While not an expressly Western problem, the promises of this false teaching are often deeply rooted in Western materialism and worldly wealth. Teachers focus on a temporal reward as evidence of God's blessing, often ignoring the greater issues of justice, reconciliation, and redemption so needed in the world today.

  Ed McBain

  Teacher, Jesus, Teaching

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• Materialism blinds us to our spiritual poverty. Jesus rebuked the Laodicean Christians because although they were materially wealthy, they were desperately poor in the things of God . Puritan Richard Baxter said, "When men prosper in the world, their minds are lifted up with their estates, and they can hardly believe that they are so ill, while they feel themselves so well."

  Randy Alcorn

  Christian, Spiritual, Jesus

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• People once considered that religions were obsolete and that material science would solve all human problems. Then they have become disillusioned with materialism and machinery and have realized that spiritual sciences are also indispensable for human welfare.

  Dalai Lama

  Spiritual, People, Problem

  Interview with Robert Thurman, www.motherjones.com. November/December 1997.

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• Hippies started the ecology movement. They combated racism. They liberated sexual stereotypes, encouraged change, individual pride, and self-confidence. They questioned robot materialism. In four years they managed to stop the Vietnam War. They got marijuana decriminalized in fourteen states during the Carter Administration.

  Timothy Leary

  War, Hippie, Self Confidence

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• The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Philosophical, Reality, Mind

  "Materialism and Empirio-criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy (1908)". Book by Vladimir Lenin. Chapter Five: "The Recent Revolution in Natural Science and Philosophical Idealism". Collected Works, Volume 14, www.marxists.org.

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• There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.

  Charles Kuralt

  People, Greed, Literature

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• Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.

  Eugene Wigner

  May, Mechanic, Quantum

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.252, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Business, Selfish, Ruins

  Theodore Roosevelt (1926). “The Works of Theodore Roosevelt”

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• The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Home, People, Soul

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.11, Routledge

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• It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one wants.

  Blaise Pascal

  Freedom, Greed, Want

  "Pensées".

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• All of us experience the sad effects of blind submission to consumerism. In the first place it represents crass materialism. At the same time it represents a radical dissatisfaction because one quickly learns that the more one possesses, the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled.

  Pope John Paul II

  Want, Firsts, Blind

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• My first book, Fast Forward, was about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood and how kids are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of celebrity, and I've often felt the reason my work has an audience in the UK is because it's everything the British love to hate about the Americans.

  Lauren Greenfield

  Growing Up, Hate, Book

  "Lauren Greenfield: 'It's everything the British love to hate about Americans'". Interview with Tim Lewis, www.theguardian.com. September 1, 2012.

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• Whats the biggest commercial for aggression, sexuality and materialism? What gets pumped into these kids heads? Taking someone elses girl, which is so laissez-faire in hip-hop, will get you killed in the streets, but it doesnt seem to be an issue when you hear it on the radio.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Girl, Kids, Issues

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• The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material conditions and class relations. It denies a will and volition that are capable of shaping the course of history. It denies an individuality that is not reducible to class. It denies both the idea and the reality of freedom, a freedom that is something more than the "bourgeois" freedom to buy and sell. It denies a morality that transcends class interests. And it denies the spirituality of man.

  Gertrude Himmelfarb

  Freedom, Independent, Reality

  Gertrude Himmelfarb (1995). “On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society”, Vintage

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• There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism.

  Umberto Eco

  Book, Writing, Hands

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• The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Modern, Scientist, Natural

  "On the Significance of Militant Materialism". Pod Znamenem Marksizma No. 3. Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 227-236, www.marxists.org.

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• Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.

  Leon Trotsky

  Men, Thinking, People

  Leon Trotsky, Max Eastman (2008). “History of the Russian Revolution”, p.353, Haymarket Books

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• All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Trust, Faith, Spiritual

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Natural Abundance: Ralph Waldo Emerson's Guide to Prosperity”, p.107, Simon and Schuster

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• Since science is essentially objective, involving the study of how things actually are, "materialism" would therefore seem to be its antithesis, since its starting point is the desire to impose upon the natural world a particular and limited way of looking at it.

  Melanie Phillips

  Atheist, Desire, World

  Melanie Phillips (2013). “The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power”, p.79, Encounter Books

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