If everyone wanted peace as much as they want a new iPhone, then there would be peace.

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in...

The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or...

It’s the poet we love in Caeiro, not the philosopher. What we really get from these poems is a childlike sense of life, with all the direct materiality of the child’s mind, and all the...

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several;...

The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.

Eyes blinded by the fog of thingscannot see truth.Ears deafened by the din of thingscannot hear truth.Brains bewildered by the whirl of thingscannot think truth.Hearts deadened by the weight of thingscannot feel truth.Throats choked by...

She chose to look at her surroundings where they “think missionary” mind-set.

Technologies of easy travel “give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore,...

The things you spend so much time on–all this work you do–might not seem as important. You might have to make room for some more spiritual things.

Money cannot buy you love. But it sure can buy you things that some people will love you for having.

You have to pay for this view (onto which he looks while writing), so our expenses keep us pretty motivated to write. It’s a vicious cycle.

The problems afflicting a nation are always in equal measure spiritual crises.

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more...

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We...

The problem with people today, is, they have religions but they have no spirituality. They go to church but they cannot even manage the condition of their own souls. They take pride to state the...

If everything must have a cause, of course, this also applies to God; if God can exist in isolation, then why not the universe?

The conflict between science and religion has a single and simple cause. It is the designation as religiously canonical of any conception of the material world open to scientific investigation….As a matter of fact, most...

There are at least two ways to believe in the idea of quality. You can believe there’s something ineffable going on within the human mind, or you can believe we just don’t understand what quality...

Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.

Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same...

Live conservatively. Save more than you spend. Diversify your assets. Don’t be a slave to your possessions; they’re only “things.” Money & things are not who you are at your core. Your God-given talents define...

Rich men use most of their money to get richer. Poor men use most of their money to look richer.

Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (…) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that...

The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will...

…if I try to make only enough money for my family’ immediate needs, it may violate Scripture. …Even though earning just enough to meet the needs of my family may seem nonmaterialistic, it’s actually selfish...

It’s not what you have on the outside that glitters in light, it’s what you have on the inside that shines in the dark.

It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. . . . Children must early learn the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most,...

At some level, it is even tempting to think that since strict materialism is among the most incoherent of superstitions – one that has never really asked the question of the being of things in...

A materialistic world will not be won to Christ by a materialistic church.

There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved. And there is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like the...

The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe.

Since science is essentially objective, involving the study of how things actually are, “materialism” would therefore seem to be its antithesis, since its starting point is the desire to impose upon the natural world a...

They might have you, and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company.

For the most expensive way to realize an orgasm, men open their wallets. For the cheapest, they close their eyes.

Life punishes those who have things in abundance by making them worry about petty things like: what to wear, or, which car to drive.

The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a...

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy...

The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an...

The life of my people is to remember forever; each head granary is full. The life of your people is to forget: your thing granaries (“museums”), and not yourselves, are full.

Why?” asked my master Caeiro.

And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable...

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your...

Imagine if all the car makers in the world were to sit down together to design one extremely simple, embellishment-free, functional car that was made from the most environmentally-sustainable materials, how cheap to buy and...

Someday you will die. Because you are embodied through and through, at that point you will cease to exist. You will not meet death, because, as the sage says, “Where death is I am not;...

There Bomar is, wherever he is, spending a fortune every day on liquor and beautiful women and expensive playthings, when he could find peace of mind right here with us, for a mere twenty cents.–“Bomar

Nothing humbles a rich man better than a poor man that isn’t willing to do ‘anything’ for money.

We had made the error of staying small – and there is no more unforgivable crime in America.

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.