Material Quotes
More Material Quotes
Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate conceptions of renunciation."A beggar cannot renounce wealth," Master would say. "If a man laments: 'My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all and enter a monastery,' to what worldly sacrifice is he referring? He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!"Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the stream of humanity as a whole.
paramahansa yogananda— Ch. 44 - With Mahatma Gandhi At Wardha
We must all begin to question the experts. They have not really been right. No abundance of material goods can compensate for the death of individuality and personal creativity.
coretta scott king— Harvard class day address (1968); published in the July 1, 1968, issue of Harvard Alumni Bulletin
— As quoted in International Education Vol. 1, p. 26
Strange as it may seem to our Western egoism , the prospect of sharing in the general, impersonal immortality of the human soul kindles in the Sufi an enthusiasm as deep and triumphant as that of the most ardent believer in a personal life continuing beyond the grave. Jalaluddin, after describing the evolution of man in the material world and anticipating his further growth in the spiritual universe , utters a heartfelt prayer for what? for self-annihilation in the ocean of the Godhead .
— Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, in The Mystics of Islam (1914) edited by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, p. 124
Spurred on by Archeological interest in the regions pre-Islamic architecture, and by linguistic research conducted by missionaries in Srinagar, [these] Indologists laid the foundation for a potent imagining of ancient Kashmir that grounded its Hindu and Buddhist material in its Hindu elites in the Valley’s topography and history, but dismissed its Muslim masses as later day interlopers.
— Ananya Jahanara Kabir, in "Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir", p.81
A writer and, I believe, generally all persons must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
jorge luis borges— Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems : Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981–1983 (1984)
Today, there is an increasing need for an integrated solution to problems and GNH provides a systematic approach. In a world drenched with materialism , the human heart yearns for something beyond material possessions, and that is one of the reasons that GNH is attracting so many people.
— Dr Susan Andrews, in As the World Looks to Bhutan…, kuenselonline, 21 March 2014
Anyone happy in this age and place Is daft or corrupt. Better to abdicate From a material and spiritual terrain Fit only for barbarians.
Roy Broadbent Fuller— 1954 'Translation'.
Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare 's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.
virginia woolf— Ch. 3 (pp. 43-44)
There is no doubt that many expensive national projects may add to our prestige or serve science. But none of them must take precedence over human needs. As long as Congress does not revise its priorities, our crisis is not just material, it is a crisis of the spirit.
— Nelson A. Rockefeller, letter to Mayor John V. Lindsay (April 24, 1971), reported in The New York Times (April 25, 1971), p. 69. The letter concerned New York City's financial problems.
Human rights, national integrity, and opportunity as against material interests?are the issues that we now must face. I take this occasion to say that the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest.
— 1913 Speech, Alabama, 27 Oct.
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
james allen— James Allen, As A Man Thinketh, Visions and Ideals (1902).
Whole great chunks of written history are of little value to the psychohistorian, while other vast areas which have been much neglected by historians childhood history, content analysis of historical imagery, and so on suddenly expand from the periphery to the center of the psychohistorian's conceptual world, simply because his or her own new questions require material nowhere to be found in history books.
lloyd demause— Ch. 2, ibid.
Taking courage and looking forward from the standpoint of higher ideas born of the multiplication of the arts, they gave up huts and began to build houses with foundations, having brick or stone walls, and roofs of timber and tiles; next, observation and application led them from fluctuating and indefinite conceptions to definite rules of symmetry. Perceiving that nature had been lavish in the bestowal of timber and bountiful in stores of building material, they... embellished them with luxuries.
vitruvius— Chapter I, Sec. 7
Our exploration of emergent social structures across domains of human activity and experience leads to an over-arching conclusion: as an historical trend, dominant functions and processes in the Information Age are increasingly organized around networks. Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture. While the networking form of social organization has existed in other times and spaces, the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure.
— Manuel Castells (1996) The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I (Information Age Series). p. 500
As material fortune is associated with the properties of the body, so honor belongs to those of the soul.
ptolemy— Book IV, sec. 1
The certain way to victory...lies in making everything on Imperial soil contribute to the war effort...combining the total material and spiritual strength of the nation...
yoshijirō umezu— Quoted in "Suicide Squads: Axis and Allied Special Attack Weapons of World War II" - Page 267 - by Richard O'Neill - History - 1981
:;The life of the spirit is the expression of Infinity and, as such, knows no artificial limits. True spirituality is not to be mistaken for an exclusive enthusiasm for some fad. It is not concerned with any “ism.” When people seek spirituality apart from life, as if it had nothing to do with the material world, their search is futile.
meher baba— Ch. 15 : The Life of the Spirit
All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.
felix frankfurter— Reply to counsel who said a challenge from the bench was “just a matter of semantics,” Reader’s Digest (June 1964).
Science contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. Its great moral contribution is objectivity, or the scientific point of view. This means doubting everything except facts; it means hewing to the facts, let the chips fall where they may.
aldo leopold— p. 153-154 ("Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons")
The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.
james truslow adams— James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (2nd Edition, Greenwood Press, p. 405)
Enemies are at work day and night in the material realm. Chief among these are ignorance, carelessness, and greed. Operating independently or together, they have wrought enormous destruction.
— p.75 (Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920))
The entrepreneur is the person who seeks to identify what consumers, at home or abroad or both, want and would be willing to buy at a profitable price. These entrepreneurs are the job-creators because it is they who gather the men and women, the material, the machinery, and the money to turn the vision of a market into a reality.
— Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph (1918–1994), British barrister and politician. ‘Introduction’, Self-Help (1859) by Samuel Smiles, from the reprinted edition by Sidgwick & Jackson (1986)
A Fallacy, or Sophism , is a false argument; or else an argument leading to a false conclusion. The use of such arguments is sometimes called sophistry ; and in complex cases, it may be very difficult to detect. When the premises are false, or unsupported, or irrelevant, the fallacy is called material ; but when the error is in the process of employing them, the fallacy is called logical .
— Roswell Park (1844) Pantology; or a systematic survey of human knowledge. p.80 §.4 (direct link)
We use purpose-built technology and work with child safety organisations to find, remove and report it, because we never want this material to appear in our search results. We are working with experts on effective ways to deter anyone tempted to look for this sickening material.
— A Company Spokesman, quoted on BBC News, "Microsoft's Bing introduces child abuse search pop-ups", July 27, 2013.
Like bubbles in the water , the worlds rise, exist and dissolve in the Supreme Self, which is the material cause and the prop of everything.
— Adi Shankara, in Atma Bodha
One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted - One need not be a House - The Brain has Corridors - surpassing material Place -
— Emily Dickinson, Poem 670, 1863.
