The possessions God allows us to have are intended for our use, not our enjoyment. Trying to squeeze something out of them… — William Gurnall Copy Share Image
We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature… — John Piper Copy Share Image
Day by day night after night Blinded by the neon lights Hurry here, hustlin' there No one's got the time to spare… — Stevie Ray Vaughan Copy Share Image
The philosophers of industrialism, from Bacon to Bentham, from Smith to Marx, insisted that the improvement of man's condition was the highest… — Lewis Mumford Copy Share Image
A large percentage of those living in developed societies are told what brand of soda they should drink, what cigarettes they should… — Fidel Castro Copy Share Image
Let us be bold enough to ask ourselves as Christians whether the Church of the Lord Jesus in the United States has… — Brennan Manning Copy Share Image
It was only in the late nineteenth century and then the twentieth century, with the maturation of consumer capitalism, that a shift… — Rodney Clapp Copy Share Image
Water and petrol both come from the earth, and though they seem to be alike and even the same, they are in… — Sadhu Sundar Singh Copy Share Image
Our present culture, however, specializes in inflaming endless lust for possessions with advertisements that constantly convince us that we need more (particularly… — Marva Dawn Copy Share Image
I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our… — Ivan Illich Copy Share Image
The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into… — Martin Luther King, Jr Copy Share Image
The conversation of most middle-class Americans, we are told, revolves around consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, where to eat,… — Brennan Manning Copy Share Image
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
So many sins against the poor cry out to high heaven! One of the most deadly sins is to deprive the laborer… — Dorothy Day Copy Share Image
The money economy thus leaves a large ecological footprint, defined as the amount of land and resources required to meet a typical… — Stuart L. Hart Copy Share Image
Can we reasonably expect happiness from an insatiable appetite which, no matter how it stuffs its belly, is still psychologically like Oliver… — Joy Davidman Copy Share Image
The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing… — Fyodor Dostoevsky Copy Share Image
When humans act like animals, they become the most dangerous of animals to themselves and other humans, and this is because of… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
By the same token, frozen dinners, a microwave oven, a dishwasher, and an illegal immigrant hired to clean the house and take… — Robert Wuthnow Copy Share Image
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know… — Paul the Apostle Copy Share Image
The idea is the least labor and capital and resources you put together and the more you accumulate the better capitalist you… — Winona LaDuke Copy Share Image
Roughly two billion people participate in the money economy, with less than half of those living in the wealthy countries of the… — Stuart L. Hart Copy Share Image
I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV,… — Bruce Springsteen Copy Share Image
In the current economic situation, the temptation for the more dynamic economies is that of chasing after advantageous alliances that, nevertheless, can… — Pope Benedict XVI Copy Share Image
We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if… — Neil Postman Copy Share Image
In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical… — Lewis Mumford Copy Share Image
The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting… — Barbara Tuchman Copy Share Image
The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely… — Thomas Merton Copy Share Image
Overpopulation is the problem of the third and fourth World; over-consumption is the problem of the West. The average American child this… — Richard J. Foster Copy Share Image
The effect of the post-Enlightenment project for human society is that all human activity is absorbed into labor. It becomes an unending… — Lesslie Newbigin Copy Share Image
All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
However destructive may be the policies of the government and the methods and products of the corporations, the root of the problem… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
We, all of us in the First World, have participated in something of a binge, a half century of unbelievable prosperity and… — Bill McKibben Copy Share Image
It was with the Industrial Revolution, as society plunged ever more eagerly into the conquest of material riches and bent all its… — Jacques Ellul Copy Share Image
Their property held them in chains...chains which shackled their courage and choked their faith and hampered their judgment and throttled their soul...If… — Cyprian Copy Share Image
We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
