Richard Foster Quotes

The lust for affluence in contemporary society has become psychotic; it has completely lost touch with reality.

People who acquire things beyond their usefulness not only will derive little or no marginal gains from these acquisitions, but they also will experience negative consequences, as with any form of gluttony.

No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want - or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you're better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.

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.

As human beings, we're very materialistic and have all this stuff - furs and cars and diamonds and money.

A lot of places think that bigger is better. It's like consumerism is taking everything over.

People who are greedy have extraordinary capacities for waste-they must, they take in too much.

Consumerism is, quite precisely, the consuming of life by the things consumed. It is living in a manner that is measured by having rather than being... and consumerism is hardly the sin of the rich. The poor, driven by discontent and envy, may be as consumed by what they do not have as the rich are consumed by what they do have. The question is not, certainly not most importantly, a question about economics. It is first and foremost a cultural and moral problem requiring a cultural and moral remedy.

Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.

There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: 'Halt! We have enough'? There is none.

Consume more than you need This is the dream Make you pauper Or make you queen I won't die lonely I'll have it all prearranged A grave that's deep and wide enough For me and all my mountains o'things

The conversation of most middle-class Americans, we are told, revolves around consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, where to eat, the price of the neighbor's house, what's on sale this week, our clothes or someone else's, the best car on the market this year, where to spend a vacation. Apparently we can't stop eating, shopping, or consuming. Success is measured not in terms of love, wisdom, and maturity but by the size of one's pile of possessions.

The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.

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

America's critics can be heard everywhere. It is too much in love with money - worshipping the god of the marketplace, the golden calf. It has too much money, seven of the top 10 banks, eight of the top 10 companies etc. It is too stingy, giving away less of its wealth than other countries. It is vulgar, a rich barbarian.

Every man now worships gold, all other reverence being done away.

Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the gold of the calf.

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.

Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.

All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left.

To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism. Affluence has itself betrayed us.

Homer Simpson is one of my favorite people, though he's not real. He represents the American who's filled with this 'affluenza.' He's constantly exposed to consumption and a sense of bigness, which is a part of being an American.

The trappings of lifestyle are often that; traps.