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
Man today is fascinated by the possibility of buying, more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption hungry... To buy the… — Erich Fromm Copy Share Image
Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property… — William Ralph Inge 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
For why, my brothers and sisters, would you rejoice in silver? Either your silver will perish, or you will, and no one… — Saint Augustine Copy Share Image
So here we are in a country with more wheat and corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything… — Will Rogers Copy Share Image
We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
In a consumer society, expectations dare not plateau, because a growing economy depends on rising expectations... The more we let our level… — Paul Brand Copy Share Image
It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Sufficient for the day is all that we can enjoy. We cannot eat or drink or wear more than the day's supply… — Charles Spurgeon Copy Share Image
To the extent that we consume, in our present circumstances, we are guilty. To the extent that we guilty consumers are conservationists,… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
That the happiness of man may still remain imperfect, as wants in this place are easily supplied, new wants likewise are easily… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Advertisers regularly con us into believing that we genuinely need one luxury after another. We are convinced that we must keep up… — Ronald J. Sider 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
I have discovered that many of the things I thought were priceless are as cheap as costume jewelry, and much of what… — Martha Beck 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
We are a material-mad race of people. Build, increase, expand, pile up, hoard! More and more and more. "If we can just… — Eugenia Price Copy Share Image
Side by side with the miseries of underdevelopment...we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissable. This superdevelopment consists in… — Pope John Paul II Copy Share Image
The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the… — Barbara Kingsolver Copy Share Image
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must… — Karl Marx Copy Share Image
Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they… — Aristotle Copy Share Image
What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie… — Sterling Hayden Copy Share Image
The individual is denuded of everything but appetites, desires, and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation or commitment. It is… — Jeremy Seabrook 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
Many Christians, though keenly sensitive to the dangers of greed and discontent that come with an economy of continually increasing consumption, nevertheless… — Joy Davidman Copy Share Image
What worries some people about consumption (and I confess at the outset to be one of these ambivalent creatures, fat but troubled… — Rodney Clapp 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
...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
All of us experience the sad effects of blind submission to consumerism. In the first place it represents crass materialism. At the… — Pope John Paul II Copy Share Image
Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle. In many parts… — Pope John Paul II 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
