Why does a steward steal? He steals because he’s not sure he’ll always remain with his master and wants to make his future secure.

Nothing in the tangible word that isn’t living has any value beyond a dollar amount. Considering that dollars can only buy more tangible and inanimate objects, it would seem a far more worthwhile goal to...

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

Whatever thing a man gets quickly enraged about is his idol, and whatever thing he makes his idol becomes his religion.

Two ideas are opposed — not concepts or abstractions, but Ideas which were in the blood of men before they were formulated by the minds of men. The Resurgence of Authority stands opposed to the...

The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake...

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

the real is coherent and probable because it is real, and not real because it is coherent…

The only way of life satisfying the need of all times must be motivated by incentives and rewards – materially, morally and spiritually because motivation for work is produced by incentives and rewards only, an...

Whoever that came up with the idea of people having to have ‘a dream’ sure knew how to keep these creatures called human beings preoccupied.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in...

If a faithful account was rendered of man’s ideas upon the Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word Gods has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown...

There have been many authorities who have asserted that the basis of science lies in counting or measuring, i.e. in the use of mathematics. Neither counting nor measuring can however be the most fundamental processes...

The author’s projected intellectual climate nearly 500 years in the future proclaims itself too pragmatic to consider living well as important as material satisfaction. This reminds us, ironically, that choosing NOT to consider life’s deeper...

The less you need, the more you live

Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety.

real world”. Refuse normalcy. Beauty is everywhere, love is endless, and joy bleeds from our everyday existence. Embrace it. I love all of you, all my friends, family, and community. I am ceaselessly grateful from...

No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

The author points to the impact of what he called Dutch disease, where the discovery of found wealth from a particular commodity causes a culture to atrophy with respect to work ethic and broader development....

An idea? An idea won’t get you nothing but another idea. You need money, cash, to make anything happen in this doggone world.

Q: What is wrong with the world?A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.

To some women, a job plays the role of a man. To most women, a man plays the role of a job.

Once employed, the employed’s friends are reduced to creatures that he only sees when he has a new problem, or, something new to show off.

Societies need self sacrificing ignorant crowd;Religions need fearful followers;Systems need obedient slaves;Corporate world needs compulsive consumers,andI NEED THE COURAGE TO RISE ABOVE THESE FOUR PARASITES.

Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set ourselves on the fruitless mission of filling the gaping hole within us with material things....

We’re a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience — among so...

Naturally there was the notion of private property as a pragmatic concept, for individuals or groups have a proclivity to tend to their own possessions with greater care and reverence than they would to common...

[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...

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let...

It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself...

Needs multiply as they are met. Woe to the man who would live a disentangled life. Be on guard, my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth!

I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth “home.” Before you know...

To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.

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

When a man’s bank balance becomes too small, his woman flees. For a man to do the same, his woman’s body — or vagina — has to do the opposite.

Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue...

Let temporal things be in the use, eternal things in the desire.

Shopkeepers —the great landed and commercial interests—regularly sat and slept, and where the two publicans occupied pews, but seldom made even the pretence of worshipping.

Melancholy in a capitalist, like the appearance of a comet, presages some misfortune to the world.

I’d much rather buy an experience than something I can possess in the material world

Fidelity surveyed a group with at least $1 million investment assets excluding real estate and retirement. 42% of them did not FEEL wealthy.

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,...

The one who lives solely with the many, solely with the best, lives only as briefly as that which he owns, passes his tests. The one living by his actions, and by his deeds, will...

humanity” a small price for the power they now wielded; power that would sustain them far beyond the lives of mere humans and perhaps, in time, even grant them immortality.

The real problems of our planet are not economic or technical, they are philosophical. The philosophy of unbridled materialism is being challenged by events.

The problem, however, is that I have yet to meet anyone, materialist or otherwise, who was able to dispense with value judgements. On the contrary, the literature of materialism is peculiarly marked by its wholesale...

….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...

If every lover was treated like they matter — everyday; valentine’s day wouldn’t be so ‘special.

…to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they...