#material

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. ↗

— Walter Kaufmann

#materialism #religion #dreams

If something possesses no capacity for activity whatever, it is nothing; it may be wholly penetrated, but it cannot be touched. Therefore passivity and reaction are everywhere equal. ↗

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

#reaction #equality

To the non-initiate, whose experience of sexuality and bodily pleasure may be distorted by negative cultural conditioning, the introduction of sexuality into a sacred context is often mistakenly misconstrued as the ordinary pursuit of sex for recreation. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#initiation #materialism-versus-spiritualism #sexuality #shamanism #tantra

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 this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit. ↗

— Ruth Benedict

#japan #materialism #spirit #united-states #victory

Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#greed #material #nourishment #food

Nowadays the dynamic element is more important in chess - players more often sacrifice material to obtain dynamic compensation. ↗

— Boris Spassky

#compensation #dynamic #element #important #material

That’s sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real.” Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. “Real love, real friends, real body parts… ↗

— Jess C. Scott

#cyberpunk #materialism #meaning #plastic-surgery #reality

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead. ↗

— James Joyce

#behind #forehead #fought #inspired #material

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 rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#possessions #readers #reading #things #life

Enttäuschung und Frustration werden [...] alle erleben, die sich wie im Märchen danach sehnen, Glück in einem Schlaraffenland zu finden ... Nur, dass unser Schlaraffenland nicht ein großer Berg von süßem Brei ist ... wir haben andere Fantasien und Bilder von Fülle und Erfülltheit in einem imaginären Schlaraffenland, das nur eben unglücklicherweise niemals dort ist, wo wir tatsächlich leben. Vielmehr leben wir mit der Hoffnung auf ein Glück, das uns das Schicksal irgenwann einmal gewähren müsse. [...] So können wir das Schlaraffenland je nach unserer eigenen Fasson ausgestalten - und wir tun es. Privat und auch gesellschaftlich. Doch sobald wir anfangen, uns mit diesem Glücksmodell anzufreunden, und gespannt darauf warten, wie im Lotto das große Los zu ziehen, werden wir auf einem Weg sein, wo das Glück ganz bestimmt nicht zu uns findet! Wir bleiben hungrig und ungesättigt. Denn geheimnisvollerweise ist das Glück dort, wo wir Bezogenheit leben - selbst in dem unspektatulärsten Tun des Alltags. ↗

— Joachim Gauck

#conduct-of-life #desires #greed #happiness #laziness