Quotes about Materialism

We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

It is a kind of pride to insist that none of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him and dependent, by His will, on material things, too.

our material riches unfortunately imply a spiritual, cultural, and moral poverty that are perhaps far greater than we see.

Before we can see that created things (especially material) are unreal, we must see clearly that they are real.

The poorest man in a religious community is not necessarily the one who has the fewest objects assigned to him for his use. Poverty is not merely a matter of not having things. It is an attitude which leads us to renounce some of the advantages which come from the use of things.

The rich of this world will vanish like smoke, and no memory of their past pleasures will remain. But even in their lifetime they do not enjoy them without bitterness, weariness and fear, for the very things whence they derive their pleasures often carry with them the seeds of sorrow.

Why did they have so many clothes, anyway? Life was so much easier in India, where a boy needed only a pair of shorts.

Their most notable defect was that they considered work a virtue, even manual labor. They were materialists, conquerors, and they were infused with a messianic enthusiasm for reforming those who did not think as they did; they did not, however, represent an immediate threat to civilization. No

No one in this world needs a mink coat but a mink.

Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little.

I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.

That man has the fewest wants who is the least anxious for wealth.