Quotes about Materialism

Science should be the search for truth, not merely the search for materialistic explanations.

Puritan leaders, at least, valued an educated mind over material riches. Cotton Mather admonished his congregation with the comment, "If your main concern be to get the riches of this world for your children, and leave a belly full of this world unto them, it looks very suspiciously as if you were yourselves the people of this world, whose portion is only in this life."30

Spiritual influence never coincided with material affluence.

On certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life.

Power and wealth increase in direct proportion to a man's distance from the material objects from which wealth and power are ultimately derived.

He had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop.

Do not be caught up in materialism, one of the real plagues of our generation-that is, acquiring things, fast-paced living, and securing career success.

Any 'Christians' who take for themselves any more than the plain necessaries of life, live in an open habitual denial of the Lord. They have gained riches and hell-fire.

Many a family, in order to make a 'proper showing,' will commit itself for a larger and more expensive house than is needed, in an expensive neighborhood. Almost everyone would, it seems, like to keep up with the Joneses.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

Today's average American is more apt to rebel against a tennis shoe not coming in the right color than against the slow erosion of our democratic freedom.

Things, things, things. Always more things, and success is seen as the abundance of things.