Benjamin Bratt Quotes

My native land is a slave of heathenism, men's god is their belly, and they live only for the present. The richer a man, the holier.

The corruption of the American soul is consumerism.

Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.

I've felt a little culpable that we entrepreneurs often invent businesses just to drive people to buy more things.

Not everything in the United States is for sale.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Sex and commerce are fine things, but man cannot live by Viagra and the Dow Jones alone. A life led collecting things and experiences in pursuit of happiness is not necessarily a bad life, but it's not a good life either. Too often, the Democrats act like the Party of Lust, and the Republicans the Party of Greed. Both are deadly sins that eat at the soul.

Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.

The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong.

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

We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really.

In twenty-first-century America, our stories have become one and the same: we work to consume, we live to consume, we are what we consume.

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.

Greed has taken the whole universe, and nobody is worried about their soul.

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.

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.

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

Too many people today know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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.

In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.

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.

The great question of our time is, 'Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?'

We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.

I guess it could be said that the inspiration for 'Requiem for a Dream' is watching the American dream not only destroy so many lives in the U.S., but infect the rest of the world with its obsession with getting more, ignoring the deadly effect that has on the planet.