#materialism

"The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen."

"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."

"The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation."

"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 are generally treated based on how much or little we have, earn, or know—or seem to have, earn, or know."

"[When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996:]If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses."

"The successful cannot be unhappy -- it was a contradiction in terms."

"Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."(Acceptance speech, National Book Award 2010 (Nonfiction), November 17, 2010)"

"A netizen speaks normally about one’s life’s first priority or preference through the profile picture; it’s often the person seen therein, but it could also be the product on which s/he lays the hand on or seen as an inset in this selfish and materialistic world."

"Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside."

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."

"To be invisible, paint yourself with the direct shade of zero. Leave nothing to chance, by taking nothing with you wherever you go."

"Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score."

"There is no indisputable proof for the big bang,"said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?"

"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."

"....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)"

"If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead."

"The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff."

"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're all to driven by materialism. Obsessed with success. With money. With trying to impress people who'll never be impressed."