Material Objects Quotes

The truth is that things matter. They have to, they are what we live with and touch each and every day. They represent what we've seen, who we've loved and where we hope to go next. They remind us of the good times and the rough patches and everything in between that's made us who we are.

Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

A refrigerator is the opposite of a drug addict, because a refrigerator starts in a box and then moves to a house.

In one sense 'there are' both universals and material objects, in another sense there is no such thing as either: statements about each can usually be analysed, but not always, nor always without remainder.

You said how strange it was that people were prepared to buy expensive material objects, but when it came to making an investment in their souls they refused to do so, considering it a monstrous indulgence and a waste of money! (58)

No material object, however beautiful or valuable, can make us feel loved, because our deeper identity and true character lie in the subjective nature of the mind.

The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it. The grace of capitalism is to make wants feel like hopes, so that material objects and stuff can feel like the possibility of something heroic and civic.

Common sense says that chairs and tables exist independently of whether anyone happens to perceive them or not.

The structure underlying the phenomena is not given by material objects like the atoms of Democritus but by the form that determines the material objects. The Ideas are more fundamental than the objects.

What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant well-being, and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money.

My image is a statement of the symbols of the harsh, impersonal products and brash materialistic objects on which America is built today. It is a projection of everything that can be bought and sold, and practical but impermanent symbols that sustain us.

The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.