All Quotes By Tag: Materialism

“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.”

“The happiest people are not those who have the most, but those who are the most grateful for what they have.”

“In a materialistic society, being poor but happy is a political statement.”

“The successful cannot be unhappy — it was a contradiction in terms.”

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

“[Letter to his wife, Natalia Sedova]In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

“COMING FORTH INTO THE LIGHTI was born the dayI thought:What is?What was?AndWhat if?I was transformed the dayMy ego shattered,And all the superficial, materialThings that matteredTo me before,Suddenly ceasedTo matter.I really came into beingThe day I no longer cared aboutWhat the world thought of me,Only on my thoughts forChanging the world.”

“Thoughts don’t become things; thoughts ARE things.”