For they (capitalists) hold as their chief heresy, in a coarser form, the fundamental falsehood that things are not made to be… — Gilbert K. Chesterton Copy Share Image
We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments,… — William James Copy Share Image
In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives… — Wendell Berry 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
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
What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he… — Mahatma Gandhi Copy Share Image
Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat. — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
The danger, then, is that materialism is not only shaping how we live but the way we think as well. It influences… — Robert Wuthnow Copy Share Image
Before our eyes we have the results of ideologies such as Marxism, Nazism and fascism, and also of myths like racial superiority,… — Pope John Paul II Copy Share Image
Based on technological research and the transformation of nature, industrialization constantly goes forward, giving proof of incessant creativity. While certain enterprises develop… — Pope Paul VI Copy Share Image
The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and… — Rick Warren Copy Share Image
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 Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build… — Will Rogers 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
Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find-nothing. — Aesop 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
We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air. — Richard J. Foster Copy Share Image
...the tragedy of consumerism: one acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus… — Brian D. McLaren 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
High thinking is inconsistent with a complicated material life based on high speed and imposed on us by mammon worship. — Mahatma Gandhi Copy Share Image
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us… — Jimmy Carter 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
Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material… — David Shi Copy Share Image
All the wants which disturb human life, which make us uneasy to ourselves, quarrelsome with others, and unthankful to God, which weary… — William Law Copy Share Image
