Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

The Whites have carried to these (colonial) people the worst that they could carry: the plagues of the world: materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism, and syphilis. Moreover, since what these people possessed on their own was superior...

I knew how one climbing the mountain of worldly success can slip down into the river below without being conscious of the descent till he is already drowning.

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

On the second and the third night there was again a ball — this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous...

Miller believes, like many theists, that religion brings us beyond the bounds of materialism. (Ironically he insists on a material explanation [evolution] for our existence.) However, he fails to explain how religion does this. Will...

Bei vielen Menschen […] vermute ich eine geheime Verfassung, deren virtueller Artikel 1 lautet: “Die Besitzstandswahrung ist unantastbar.

Fighting physically signifies spiritual weakness.

When we see a good-looking woman with a not-so-good-looking man, we assume that the man must have a good bank balance. When we see a good-looking man with a not-so-good-looking woman, we assume that she...

Ambition’ is ‘greed’ rebranded.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain,...

One criticism of Freud still sometimes heard on the political Left is that his thinking is individualist — that he substitutes ‘private’ psychological causes and explanations for social and historical ones. This accusation reflects a...

There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone … Mind cannot arise alone without body, or apart from sinews and blood … You must admit, therefore, that when then body has perished, there is...

The job wouldn’t be just put the summer, but for a long time, as long as she could see ahead. Once they were used to the money coming in it would be impossible to do...

This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is noth-ing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes tocondemn with such severity as the pursuit of...

When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.

If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.

There is one advantage to having nothing, it never needs repair.

It’s all right. I’m not upset. After all, they were just things. When you’ve lost your mother and your father, you can’t care so much about things, can you?

[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...

One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference...

There’s a correlation between the number of digits on a man’s bank balance, and, the number of things that his woman is willing to forgive him for.

The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.

It’s not enough, and so limiting, to teach the simplistic value of a designer’s material wear. Give children the gift of values that will last far beyond [a] fad’s temporal popularity.

The one single use of things which we call our own is that they might be his who hath need of them.

He looked at them and saw their faces did not fit. The skin on the skulls crawled and twitched like half-solid paste. All the heads in his angle of vision seemed irregular lumps, like potatoes...

When people are treated like a product, they become obsessed with materialism.

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

The unity of Nigeria will only come if we overcome and overgrow tribe, materialism and selfish human nature.

It is very awkward how some people don’t have any investment, wouldn’t buy self-development books, complain that organic foods are too expensive for them to afford, but yet they have all the costly brand name...

Makers?” said Toby. Jaysir nodded.”We’re not loners, you know. There just weren’t any on Wallop. We love to get together, we just refuse to engage in social relations that are based on material inequity.

A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would...

Parents who spoil their children out of ‘love’ should realize that they are performing acts of child abuse. Although there are no laws against such abuse–no man-made laws anyway–this spiritual mistreatment may result in as...

*I’m hustling* is a low self-esteem having man’s way of saying *I’m unemployed,* when answering a seemingly materialistic woman’s question as to what he does for a living.

Intelligent design theorists have learned a few lessons from the failures of their predecessors and have devised a more sophisticated strategy to compete head on with evolution. One of the main things they [intelligent design...

It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet,...

…it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of...

Every year I collect a select amount of material possessions (baseball cards, coins, famous paraphernalia) to pass on to my children. In two or more generations they should have a small fortune of ‘ancient’ famous...

you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and...

Yes, I’m a materialist. I’m willing to be shown wrong, but that has not happened — yet. And I admit that the reason I’m unable to accept the claims of psychic, occult, and/or supernatural wonders...

Stuff comes and stuff goes and the only thing that matters in the end is who you are inside, what you do and what make it leaves in the world.

immaterial” to God.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can’t have that they don’t think for a second about whether they really want it.

But I do know we’re deficient in some way. We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for...

In a materialistic society, an employed boy is older than an unemployed man.

Generally, people need less than a quarter of what they want.

Sometimes we can’t see the relevance of Jesus Christ until we become dissatisfied with the world and realise that there must be more to life than working 9 to 5, buying and accumulating expensive ‘things’and...

She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects.

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us.