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A Short Compendium of Quotations Concerning Commercialization
"Abuses of economic power are nothing new. Every major religion in the world has warned about societies allowing excessive influences of mercantile or commercial values. The profiteering motive is driven and single-minded. When unconstrained, it can override or erode community, health, safety, parental nurturing, due process, clean politics, and many other basic social values that hold together a society."
Ralph Nader, On the Presidency and Democracy
"Through craving for riches the ignorant man ruins himself as he does others."
Dhammapada
"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."
Jesus Christ, Matthew 6:24, The Bible
"How heavy is the toll of sins and wrongs that wealth, power and prestige extract from man!"
Gandhi
"People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil
. . . . But you, man of God, flee from all this . . . . Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth . . . ."
The Bible, Timothy 6.9-17
"The Master said, 'A superior man takes as much trouble to discover what is right as lesser men take to discover what will pay.'"
Confucius, Analects 4.16
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal."
Jesus Christ, Matthew 6.19-20, The Bible
"Wealth and honor are what every man desires; but if they have been obtained in violation of moral principles, they must not be kept. Poverty and humble station are what every man dislikes; but if they can only be avoided by violating moral principles, he must accept them. If a superior man departs from humanity, how can he be called humane? A superior man never abandons humanity even for the lapse of a single meal. In moments of haste, he acts according to it. In times of difficulty or confusion, he acts according to it."
Confucius, Analects 4.5
"Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.
"If he makes the root his secondary object, and the result his primary, he will only wrangle with his people, and teach them rapine.
"Hence the accumulation of wealth is the way to scatter the people; and the letting it be scattered among them is the way to collect the people."
The Great Learning
"On September 10, half the world was already living, if one can call it that, on less than $2 a day, with a fifth surviving on half of that. Thirty thousand children were already dying needless deaths daily. Inequality is exploding both within and among nations, and perhaps contrary to the poor of the nineteenth century, today's poor know they are poor. The plausible fantasies of Western television constantly remind them of their own failure to capture the material rewards of modernity."
Susan George
"No sane person seeks a world divided between billions of excluded people living in absolute deprivation and a tiny elite guarding their wealth and luxury behind fortress walls. No one rejoices at the prospect of life in a world of collapsing social and ecological systems. Yet we continue to place human civilization and even the survival of our species at risk mainly to allow a million or so people to accumulate money beyond any conceivable need. We continue to go boldly where no one wants to go."
David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World
"Given the record of this century, an extraterrestrial observer might conclude that conversion of raw materials to wastes—often toxic ones—is the real purpose of human economic activity."
Gary Gardner & Payal Sampat, Forging a Sustainable Materials Economy
"Channel One, an advertiser-sponsored school television program, beams its news and ads for candy bars, fast food, and sneakers directly into the classroom for twelves minutes a day in more than 12,000 schools. In exchange for a satellite dish and video equipment, for each classroom, the school must agree that Channel One will be shown on at least 90 percent of school days to 90 percent of the children. Teachers are not allowed to interrupt the show or turn it off."
David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World
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