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 in a mind is yet, even though we might someday. Either of those opinions allows one to distinguish quantity and quality. In order to confuse quantity and quality, you have to reject both possibilities. The mere possibility of there being something ineffable about personhood is what drives many technologists to reject the notion of quality. They want to live in an airtight reality that resembles an idealized computer program, in which everything is understood and there are no fundamental mysteries. They recoil from even the hint of a potential zone of mystery or an unresolved seam in one's worldview. This desire for absolute order usually leads to tears in human affairs, so there is a historical reason to distrust it. Materialist extremists have long seemed determined to win a race with religious fanatics: Who can do the most damage to the most people?

Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium. Few things about the strategy of contemporary apologists are more repellent than their frequent recourse to spurious alternatives. The lesser lights inform us that the alternative to Christianity is materialism, thus showing how little they have read, while the greater lights talk as if the alternative were bound to be a shallow and inane optimism. I don't believe that man will turn this earth into a bed of roses either with the aid of God or without it. Nor does life among the roses strike me as a dream from which one would not care to wake up after a very short time.

It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me... And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die! So what's it all about? What's it for? It's not possible. It's not possible that life could have been as senseless and sickening as this. And if it has really been as sickening and senseless as this why do I have to die, and die in agony? There's something wrong. Maybe I didn't live as I should have done? came the sudden thought. But how can that be when I did everything properly? he wondered, instantly dismissing as a total impossibility the one and only solution to the mystery of life and death.

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.

....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 idea of what was best.(tr Jowett)

It is better to seek spirituality than materialism.

If you make everything solely about money you end up with a very poor society.

Don't get too lost in consumerism or materialism. As for ownership, the ultimate test of it is were you born with it and can you take it with you when you leave?

All the wealth in the world is nothing, pointless - of no true value - if you yourself feel worthless.

It is wiser to love who you are than what you want.

Material civilization, nay, even luxury, is necessary to create work for the poor. Bread! Bread! I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven!

Lust for fame and fortune is like an intoxication. While a man is intoxicated, he doesn't realize it. It's only after it is all over that he realizes that everything is like an illusion. If men could realize this all the time, there would be much less trouble on earth, and there would be much happier people too.

Wealth and fame are of dubious value when we think that life is like a fleeting dream.

Do not think you need necessarily have as fine swords and clothing as your neighbor. As long as they are not disreputable, they will do. And if you borrow and so lose your independence, you will be despised.

The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life.

Those who live by bread alone will submit, for the sake of it, to the vilest abuse, like a hungry dog.

Acquisition means life to miserable mortals.

The steady pressure to consume, absorb, participate, receive, by eye, ear, mouth, and mail involves a cruelty to intestines, blood pressure, and psyche unparalleled in history.

Materialism is decadent and degenerate only if the spirit of the nation has withered and if individual people are so unimaginative that they wallow in it.

We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.