Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

It is no longer permitted them [Christians and Jews] to put themselves, with respect to their houses, on an equal footing with the dwellings of their Muslim neighbors, and still less to build their buildings higher. If they are of the same height, or higher, it is incumbent upon us to pull them down to a size a little less than the houses of the true believers. This conforms to the word of the Prophet: 'Islam rules, and nothing shall raise itself above it.' This is also in order to hinder them from knowing where our weak spots are and in order to make a distinction between their dwellings and ours…. They should not be permitted to employ mounts like the Muslims. They must use neither saddles, nor iron-stirrups, in order to be distinguished from the true believers. They must under no circumstance ride horses because of the noble character of this animal …. They shall only walk single-file, and in narrow lanes they must withdraw even more into the most cramped part of the road.

…luxury is the result of wealth, or it makes wealth necessary. It corrupts both rich and poor, the one by possessing, the other by coveting. It sells out the fatherland to indolence and vanity; it deprives the State of all its Citizens by enslaving some of them to others and all of them to opinion.

How unfortunate and how narrowing a thing it is for a man to have wealth who makes a god of it instead of a servant.

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him.

He [Karl Marx] forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment.

There's nothing worse in life than to sit there and be the victim of a process that's outside your control.

To me, when you're at a hotel, and your home environment is ultimately dictated by somebody else, I always find that a little bit oppressive and scary in a way. Especially if it's not done well or not run well.

There's no one who, at some point, hasn't had the feeling their life is on the rails and they can't do anything about it.

Corporate America limits the world to consumerism. Science can limit it to the material world. Even religion limits it to a lot of theories that can explain everything. I think we need cinema to break that apart and remind us that we're not in control, and we don't understand as much as we think do.

It's insidious how Hollywood warps your values without you even realizing that it's happening to you. You get a little whiff of success and it whets your appetite, and before you know it you're going right down the road they've laid out for you.

The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die.

I fear we are too much concerned with material things to remember that our real strength lies in spiritual values.

If we understand our own times, we will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing this. ... We call our strategy the "wedge."

It is difficult to love mankind unless one has a reasonable private income, and when one has a reasonable private income one has better things to do than loving mankind.

Secularism, materialism, and the intrusive presence of things have put out the light in our souls and turned us into a generation of zombies.

It wasn't right to have someone charge into you your world without even asking, acting as if you were nothing more than an egg to be flipped and flopped, sunny-side up or scrambled, depending on the whims on whoever ran your life..._

The overwhelming majority of people, including Christians, are materialists. They do not believe in the power of spirit. They believe only in material power.

We are all slaves to the shining metal.

By recognizing a favorable opinion of yourself, and taking pleasure in it, you in a measure give yourself and your peace of mind into the keeping of another, of whose attitude you can never be certain. You have a new source of doubt and apprehension.

Wealth is the smallest thing on earth, the least gift that God has bestowed on mankind.

How did I get here? Somebody pushed me. Somebody must have set me off in this direction and clus-ters of other hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world.

All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hinderances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them.

My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.

The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.

Materialism and spirituality are two pretty racquets with which charlatans in cap and gown make the same ball fly.