Materialism Quotes - Page 4

Man would rather be loved for what he has, than be hated for what he lacks.

God is powerful. Even those who claim not to believe in him fear him. Though their mouths may confess to disbelieve in him, their hearts yearn for him.

Money and machines anesthetize neediness. They put us in charge, in control. As long as the money holds out and the machines are in good repair, we don't need to pray.

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.

But even a medicine man like myself has to have some money, because you force me to live in your make-believe world where I can't get along without it.

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

Virtues are worth more than the material things.

Materialists deny God because they can't smell a rose with a telescope.

The materialists, or some of them, would have us believe that the brain produces thoughts as an organ secretes fluids; this is to overlook What constitutes the very essence of thought, namely the materially unexplainable miracle of subjectivity: as if the cause of consciousness - immaterial and non-spatial by definition - could be a material object.

All religions are guesswork

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.

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ...So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.

Generally, people need less than a quarter of what they want.

Shopkeepers —the great landed and commercial interests—regularly sat and slept, and where the two publicans occupied pews, but seldom made even the pretence of worshipping.

We look to the accumulation of sensory pleasures to give our lives meaning. We have the ability now to consume anything we want and this capacity far exceeds our actual needs. With so much at our fingertips, a kind of gluttony pervades our mind-sets.

The minute you hear a sermon on materialism, you're glad somebody else is there to hear it.

If everything must have a cause, of course, this also applies to God; if God can exist in isolation, then why not the universe?

The death of a billionaire is worth more to the media than the lives of a billion poor people.

How good something is should never be determined by its cost, designer, origin, or its perceived value by others.

The only real reason that some relationships and marriages have not yet been ended is because in each case one of the partners has not yet found their ideal partner or someone they love or at least like.

We are being called upon to act against a prevailing culture, to undermine our own entrenched tendency to accumulate and to consume, and to refuse to define our individuality by our presumed ability to do whatever we want.

God is not against you owning things, but he is against the things owning you.

Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.

Desire is insatiable as death, but He who fills all in all can fill it. The capacity of our wishes who can measure? But the immeasurable wealth of God can more than overflow it.

An expensive coffin does not decrease the deceased’s chances of going to hell.

They might have you, and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company.

Remember, the security and happiness you are seeking is not in your material possessions, your degrees, or relationships. It is much closer than you think.

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.

I’ve often wondered where Jesus would apply His hastily made whip if He were to visit our culture. My guess is that it would not be money-changing tables in the temple that would feel His wrath, but the display racks in Christian bookstores.

We regard promissory materialism as superstition without a rational foundation. The more we discover about the brain, the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena, and the more wonderful do both the brain events and the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists . . . who often confuse their religion with their science.

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

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

William Carey chides his countrymen for deciding it would be impossible for the Gospel to travel over great distances and to penetrate varied cultures when they are willing to face the same trials for the sake of commerce.

I thought suddenly, what is the meaning of all these things? All these bags and bags I've been packing? We could take everything we have with us. We could take every single thing that every single person in the world has ever had. But not of it would mean anything to me. Because no matter how much I took and no no matter how much I had for the rest of my life, I didn't have him anymore. I could have piled everything from here straight to heaven. None of it was him.

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.

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.

The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.

*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.

....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)

Ambition is greed without makeup.

Whatever thing a man gets quickly enraged about is his idol, and whatever thing he makes his idol becomes his religion.

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

Methodological naturalism is a “ground rule” of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify

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.

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.

Hoarding is both unnecessary and an affront to God, who is perfectly capable of providing abundantly for those who trust in him.

We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them....Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important.

Materialism is an identity crisis.

An atheist is a disappointed true believer he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope

Makers?" said Toby. Jaysir nodded."We're not loners, you know. There just weren't any on Wallop. We love to get together, we just refuse to engage in social relations that are based on material inequity.

Some people, when there’s a threat of everything they have being ripped away at a moments notice, they place value on the things they can keep with them, or find anywhere, so they can say ‘these are my things, nobody else can touch them.’

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.

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.

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…

And then one day you realise that if you want to be rich, you'd have to give away almost everything you own.

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

He is an atheist anyone who does not believe in my god and the wrath of god is upon him; I am in my right to meet that wrath on him," thunders the fanatic

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

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

Love people. Use things. The opposite never works.