Materialism Quotes

Look closely.

“Remember how passionately you yearned in the past for many of the things which you hate or despise now. Remember how many things you lost trying to satisfy your former desires. The same thing could happen now, with the desires which excite you at present. Try to tame your present desires, calm them; this is most beneficial, and most achievable.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 49)

“Markets often persuade us that we don’t have enough. Communities remind us that we do.”
Seth Godin, Blog

“We may claw and fight and work to own things, but those things can be taken away in a second. The same goes for other things we like to think are ‘ours’ but are equally precarious: our status, our physical health or strength, our relationships. How can these really be ours if something other than us—fate, bad luck, death, and so on—can dispossess us of them without notice? So what do we own? Just our lives—and not for long.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 360)

“Meaning is not found in the material realm—dinner, jazz, cocktails, conversation or whatever. Meaning is what’s left when everything else is stripped away.”
Howard, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 126)

It do be like that.

“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”
Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 258)

“Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it’s no more than a gift on loan.”
John McGahern, The Leavetaking, via Sunbeams (Page 109)

“One is not rich by what one owns, but more by what one is able to do without with dignity.”
Immanuel Kant, via Sunbeams (Page 103)

“The diseases of the rational soul are long-standing and hardened vices, such as greed and ambition—they have put the soul in a straitjacket and have begun to be permanent evils inside it. To put it briefly, this sickness is an unrelenting distortion of judgment, so things that are only mildly desirable are vigorously sought after.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 93)

Freedom doesn’t come with more; it comes with less.

“The unrestricted person, who has in hand what they will in all events, is free. But anyone who can be restricted, coerced, or pushed into something against what they will is a slave.”
Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 81)

“Poverty is not the absence of goods, but rather the overabundance of desire.”
Plato, via Sunbeams (Page 53)

“Remember: even what we get for free has a cost, if only in what we pay to store it—in our garages and in our minds. As you walk past your possessions today, ask yourself: Do I need this? Is it superfluous? What’s this actually worth? What is it costing me?”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 75)

“‘Sought’ is from the verb to seek; I have always been looking for something. I see that now, for as long as I can recall I harboured fantasies of how some object or experience would heal me, would make me whole. Sometimes before Christmas I would be so euphoric at the prospect of the following day’s gifts that I’d vibrate until it felt like I might shape-shift. What was I imagining the millennium Falcon or whatever it was would bring? What was the inherent drive that was so fiercely engaged? I always felt these artefacts would bring completion. It was like I was born with the yearning to be whole and continually felt that each new object or encounter, particularly if enthusiastically heralded, would bring redemption.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 194)

50 Materialism Quotes to WAKE YOU UP From The Nightmare of More

Excerpt: Consumer culture is so good at making us want more. Read our 50 materialism quotes to WAKE UP from that nightmare and learn to live better.

“Our possessions possess us. All the things I owned kept the back of my mind activated. I used to sit around and feel weighted down by all the stuff in my life. I’d worry about everything I had, thinking ‘I’ve got this much, so now I need more – I need to level it out: I have the TV, so I need the DVD player; I have the garage, so I need a nice car to fill it; I have this, so I need that.’ It’s a never-ending cycle, a cold war with yourself.”
Colin Wright, via Everything That Remains

Beyond the Quote (333/365)

You know that feeling you get when you’re too excited to focus on anything else except for the thing that you’re excited about? Yeah, that was me a few days ago as I rushed home to unbox the new phone that had finally been delivered. I knew that I had responsibilities that needed responding to, but I decided to let the excitement sweep me away instead. Or maybe it just swept me away and I like to pretend that I “let” it. None-the-less, right as I was unboxing my new phone and getting everything set up, lo and behold, what happens next? My computer breaks down.

“When you realize that all your material achievements are of value only in comparison with those who don’t have them, this is joy that springs from another’s deprivation. Can you really call this joy? Isn’t it actually a kind of sickness? It is time everyone addressed this. If you were alone on this planet, what would you want for yourself? Ask yourself this question and see where it takes you.”
Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 221)

“There is something within every human being that dislikes boundaries, that is longing to become boundless. Human nature is such that we always yearn to be something more than what we are right now. No matter how much we achieve, we still want to be something more. If we just looked at this closely, we would realize that this longing is not for more; this longing is for all. We are all seeking to become infinite. The only problem is that we are seeking it in installments.”
Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 23)