"Materialist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brute creation, as exhibited in a remarkably wide range of action and contrivance, and in a very varied and oftentimes perplexing conjuncture of circumstances, seems to bring man and beast very near to each other, and to furnish some ground for the theory of the materialist, that there is no essential difference between the two species of existences. But when we pass beyond the mere power of acting, to the additional power of surveying or inspecting an act, and of forming an estimate of its relations to ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Materialist school, Owen, about memory?" said Julian, "i e, do you go with Hobbes and Condillac, and make it a decaying ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the utter abandon with which Alexander committed his crimes, we are forced to conclude that he was an atheist and a materialist. There is a time in the life of every philosophic and unhappy soul when all human endeavor seems nothing more than the despairing, purposeless activity of an aggregation of puppets. But in Alexander VI we discover no trace of a Faust, nothing of his ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... speaks extremely well for Mr. Wildmay. It is not every man who would be capable of so purely intellectual a passion. I suppose one must call his feeling for her a passion? It indicates a distinction in his nature. He can hardly be a mere materialist. But—but I think it's heart-rending that he ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... for which I ask to embolden me to go forwards is single, not double. It is necessary and not arbitrary, and it is one which the veriest sceptic or the most cynical materialist will recognise as sufficient. If I am to work out the Scheme I have outlined in this book, I must have ample means for doing so. How much would be required to establish this Plan of Campaign in all its fulness, overshadowing ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... thought of their lives as woven on the loom of spiteful fates, whom they endeavored to humor by calling euphonious names. The materialist supposes that his life is the creature of circumstances, a rudderless ship in a current, mere flotsam and jetsam on the wave. The Christian knows that the path of his life has been prepared for him to walk in; and that its sphere, circumstances, and character are due to the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... infer the state of a man's mind from the state of his brain, or the state of his brain from the state of his mind. So long as the usual conception of causal dependence is retained, this state of affairs can be used by the materialist to urge that the state of our brain causes our thoughts, and by the idealist to urge that our thoughts cause the state of our brain. Either contention is equally valid or equally invalid. The fact seems ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... will-power, and especially against the evil eye. This curious and widely-spread superstition was probably the raison d'etre of most of the amulets worn or carried by Romans. A modern Italian, even if he be a complete sceptic and materialist, will probably be found to have some amulet about him against the evil eye, "just to be on the safe side."[119] A list of amulets, both Greek and Roman, will be found in the Dictionary of Antiquities, and in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie, s.v. "amulet," ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of self-seeking, an embodied theory. The materialist conception of history, one feels, is his life-blood. He resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding, I got the impression that he despises a ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... very psychic persons are called, it is quite possible that, worn next the skin, a certain amount of magnetic fluid may be transmitted to the wearer, producing a distinct effect upon his vitality. There's nothing occult about that. The most thoroughgoing materialist might acknowledge it. But when it comes to spells, and all that gibberish, there, of course, I part company. The magical power of certain precious stones may be a fact of nature, but I see no proof of its truth, and therefore ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... the present question has no existence. If this announcement appears startling, it can only be because no materialist has ever taken the trouble to formulate his own theory with distinctness. For, as previously shown, Materialism necessarily involves the doctrine of conscious automatism; but, if so, the Will is concluded not to be an agent at all, and therefore it becomes idle to discuss ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... age.... I am an atheist, I do not believe in God.... We may peacefully take our stand upon the ground of Socialism, and thus conquer the stupidity of the masses in so far as stupidity reveals itself in religious forms and dogmas." The same German Socialist and atheist taught in his book, "Materialist Basis of History": ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto |
