Materialism Quotes - Page 15

• The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.

  Marya Mannes

  Dream, Romantic Love, Reality

  Marya Mannes (1971). “Out of my time”

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• The only antidote to materialism is giving, because materialism's all about getting. Every time I give, my heart grows bigger. Every time I give, I become more like Jesus.

  Rick Warren

  Jesus, Heart, Giving

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life and the most basic demands of Christian morality.

  Pope Francis

  Christian, People, Demand

  Pope Francis “The Blessing of Family: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis”, Franciscan Media

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• If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism.

  Talcott Parsons

  Bourgeoisie, Ends, Idealism

  Max Weber, Talcott Parsons (2003). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.3, Courier Corporation

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• The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of today, were all emanations of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.

  Henry Adams

  Play, Hymns, Yesterday

  Henry Adams (2014). “Esther”, p.5, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Individually, people are finding that a simpler lifestyle provides greater satisfaction than relentless pursuit of materialism.

  Laurance Rockefeller

  People, Satisfaction, Lifestyle

  "U-Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the". Book by Bruce Grierson, p.53, April 3, 2007.

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• Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.

  Mason Cooley

  Greed, Lust, Literature

  "City Aphorisms, Eighth Selection". Book by Mason Cooley, 1991.

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• If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this. ... We call our strategy the "wedge."

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Reality, Challenges, Mind

  "Defeating Darwinism by opening minds" by Phillip E. Johnson, (pp. 91-92), 1997.

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• Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness.

  John Searle

  Awareness, Ends, States

  "Consciousness and Language". Book by John Searle, 2002.

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• American energy. . . is the energy of violence, of free-floating resentment and anxiety unleashed by chronic cultural dislocations which must be, for the most part, ferociously sublimated. This energy has mainly been sublimated into crude materialism

  Susan Sontag

  Anxiety, Energy, Floating

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• The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.

  Norbert Wiener

  Brain, Information, Matter

  Norbert Wiener (1961). “Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine”, p.132, MIT Press

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• As thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4265, Delphi Classics

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• By the same token, frozen dinners, a microwave oven, a dishwasher, and an illegal immigrant hired to clean the house and take one's cat to the vet would have seemed like the epitome of materialism in another time, but now provide the only means available for two-career couples to work hard enough at their jobs to earn the salaries they need to pay for those labor-saving amenities.

  Robert Wuthnow

  Jobs, Couple, Hard Work

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• The sense that materialism has gotten out of hand is magnified by the pressures facing middle-class American families.

  Robert Wuthnow

  Hands, Class, Pressure

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• The danger, then, is that materialism is not only shaping how we live but the way we think as well. It influences our consumer tastes and our preference for high-paying jobs, but it also alters our capacity to pray, the nature of our prayers, and the ways in which religious tutelage instructs our values.

  Robert Wuthnow

  Religious, Jobs, Prayer

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• Democracy encourages a taste for physical gratification; this taste, if it becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only; and materialism, in its turn, hurries them on with mad impatience to these same delights; such is the fatal circle within which democratic nations are driven round. It were well that they should see the danger and hold back.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Believe, Men, Circles

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2015). “Democracy in America - Vol. I. and II.”, p.599, Read Books Ltd

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• You don't have to be a Christian to recognize that materialism does not match reality. Materialism is not true to universal human experience - what we all know about ourselves.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Christian, Reality, Doe

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• The most consistent versions of materialism deny the reality of anything beyond matter - no soul, no spirit, no will, no mind. This is called reductionism: Humans are reduced to biochemical machines.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Reality, Soul, Mind

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• It really is a very radical call ... to reject materialism as our central value and to think about the sanctity of life and what that really means if we take it seriously.

  Naomi Oreskes

  Mean, Thinking, Sanctity

  Source: to.pbs.org

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• I am convinced that if we lose kids to the culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war, it's because we don't dare them, not because we don't entertain them. It's because we make the gospel too easy, not because we make it too difficult. Kids want to do something heroic with their lives, which is why they play video games and join the army. But what do they do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death?

  Shane Claiborne

  War, Kids, Army

  Shane Claiborne (2010). “The Irresistible Revolution: Living As an Ordinary Radical”, p.177, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The grace that has freed us from bondage to sin is desperately needed to free us from our bondage to materialism.

  Randy Alcorn

  Grace, Sin, Bondage

  Randy Alcorn (2011). “Money, Possessions, and Eternity”, p.80, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• I wonder how long this word will last, governed exclusively by the merciless, inhuman and immoral criteria of global economy. Seeing the shadow of distant islands, I imagined one still inhabited by a tribe of poets set aside for when, after the middle age of materialism, humanity will have to start to put other values into his existence.

  Tiziano Terzani

  Islands, Long, Humanity

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• Science has, after all, made some colossal blunders in the past... Our current materialism and its rejection of the idea of a spirit or soul might be just another great falsity.

  Susan Blackmore

  Past, Ideas, Rejection

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• An idol is not necessarily something concrete, like a golden calf. It can also be something abstract, like matter. Is matter part of the created order? Sure it is. So the philosophy of materialism qualifies as an idol in the biblical sense.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Philosophy, Biblical, Order

  "Finding Truth". Interview with Jonathan Petersen, www.biblegateway.com. December 10, 2015.

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• We wanted to more richly experience why we were alive, not just make a better life, and so people went in search of things. The great thing that came from those that time was to realize that there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late sixties and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.

  Steve Jobs

  People, Alive, Realizing

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