All Quotes By Tag: Materialism

“Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (…) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.”

“Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.”

“It is easier for one to take risks and to chase his dreams with a mindset that he has nothing to lose. In this lies the immense passion, the great advantage of avoiding a materialistic, pleasure-filled way of life.”

“I think at the heart of so much restlessness of the day is a spiritual vacuum. There is a yearning for meaningful lives, a yearning for values we can commonly embrace. I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.”

“We are more in control of how much we know than we are of how much we have.”

“Our lives are mere flashes of light in an infinitely empty universe. In 12 years of education the most important lesson I have learned is that what we see as “normal” living is truly a travesty of our potential. In a society so governed by superficiality, appearances, and petty economics, dreams are more real than anything anything in the “real world”. Refuse normalcy. Beauty is everywhere, love is endless, and joy bleeds from our everyday existence. Embrace it. I love all of you, all my friends, family, and community. I am ceaselessly grateful from the bottom of my heart for everyone. The only thing I can ask of you is to stay free of materialism. Remember that every day contains a universe of potential; exhaust it. Live and love so immensely that when death comes there is nothing left for him to take. Wealth is love, music, sports, learning, family and freedom. Above all, stay gold.”

“Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.”

“We’re all to driven by materialism. Obsessed with success. With money. With trying to impress people who’ll never be impressed.”

“Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the ‘soul’ or the ‘spirit’ ceases likewise.I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.”

“Los Angeles is a town where status is all and status is only given to success. Dukes and millionaires and playboys by the dozen may arrive and be glad-handed for a time, but they are unwise if they choose to live there because the town is, perhaps even creditably, committed to recognising only professional success, and nothing else, to be of lasting value. The burdensome obligation imposed on all its inhabitants is therefore to present themselves as successes, because otherwise they forfeit their right to respect in that environment … There is no place in that town for the “interesting failure” or for anyone who is not determined on a life that will be shaped in a upward-heading curve.”

“An expensive car is material in nature, but driving it does not necessarily make us materialist, just as sitting in a church does not make us spiritual.”

“Some people are way less tortured by poverty than some are tormented by wealth.”

“It is better to waste one’s gold than to waste one’s time, for gold can be acquired from a mine, sold, gifted, or stored in a bank. Time has no master and no shape. No rock can contain it, and nobody can own it. Time is the breath of the Goddess, the rhythm of her chest, the pulse of her beating heart.”

“Civilization is not the one that has an abundance of material objects to incessantly crave for, rather true civilization is the one that has an abundance of contentment regardless of material possession.”

“May we recognise the species of trees before we learn the symbols of corporations, may we learn the songs of the birds before the top 40. May we touch hearts before we touch screens.”