Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

We do not want to think. We do not want to hear. We do not care about anything. Only give us a good dinner and plenty of money, and let us outshine our neighbors. There is the Nineteenth Century Gospel.

This has resulted in more and more people becoming inner-directed and having as their only goal, getting as much as they can get out of the system and putting as little into it as possible.

We live in a society that, for the most part, is morally and spiritually bankrupt. Our culture is a culture of consumerism. How sustainable is that?

I don't need gold in heaven, I gotta have it now.

Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity.

....I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States.

There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of new possessions they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.

I think that money is the root of all evil. I've seen it happen.

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

We inhabit a world where we're taught that we can have what we desire, and tend to act on it - the least we can do is admit to it when we succumb to our instincts.

Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.

Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

I think one of the most pervasive evils in this world is greed and acquiring money for money's sake. Once you have six houses and a plane, it's just about a number. It's never been anything I understood.

Self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.

We are shallow because we have become enslaved by gross materialism, the glitter of gold and its equivalents, for which reason we think that only the material goods of this earth can satisfy us and we must therefore grab as much as can while we are able.

The corruption of the American soul is consumerism.

The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth.

The world is so competitive, aggressive, consumive, selfish and during the time we spend here we must be all but that.

Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

You're never rich enough if you can be richer.

There are a lot of things to get seduced by in America.

The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal.

Greed is normally balanced by fear.

The heart which finds life in material wealth is usually certain to go farther and seek for more in the satisfaction of base and sullen appetites.