Best 279 quotes in «consumerism quotes» category

We have a fundamental systemic flaw. We have managed to create scenarios where you can ‘earn’ a living without contributing.

We have chosen a problematic name for ourselves: we are no longer souls as we once were, not even citizens; we're all consumers now, grasping all the stuff every which way.

We have too quickly bought into the lie that we’ll be happier with more—and as a result, too often miss the joy that comes from owning less.

We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, children...Where nobody dies...Where all it takes is cheap, easily available product -- a packet of salted peanuts or a new type of carpet cleaner -- to bring immediate, undiluted joy.

Well, in our society, we have things that you might use your intelligence on, like politics, but people really can't get involved in them in a very serious way―so what they do is they put their minds into other things, such as sports. You're trained to be obedient; you don't have an interesting job; there's no work around for you that's creative; in the cultural environment you're a passive observer of usually pretty tawdry stuff; political and social life are out of your range, they're in the hands of the rich folk. So what's left? Well, one thing that's left is sports―so you put a lot of the intelligence and the thought and the self-confidence into that. And I suppose that's also one of the basic functions it serves in the society in general: it occupies the population, and keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter. In fact, I presume that's part of the reason why spectator sports are supported to the degree they are by the dominant institutions.

We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consumerism needs children who do not stay attached to their toys for very long and learn to expect the next round of presents as soon as possible. When consumerism succeeds, our attachments are shallow, easily broken, so we can move on to the next thing we're supposed to get. Being a good consumer means desiring new things, not cherishing old ones. And the new things you're supposed to desire are not always material things. Spirituality is now a consumerist enterprise, too.

When we black people commit ourselves to living simply as a political action, as a way of breaking the stress caused by unrelenting hedonistic desire for material objects that are not needed for survival, or essential to well-being, we will not be talking about ebonics. We will be out in the streets demanding that the public schools have enough teachers so that all kids, cross color, can read and write in standard English and in Spanish too.

What other nations fail to recognize in us--our consumerism--is that we don't simply want to own everything, we want to be everything.

What use will money and wealth be to those who possess them when the rivers and land are poisoned, the seas devoid of life and the air polluted beyond tolerance?

When selecting a one-night stand, a heterosexual woman who is materialistic is a trillion times more likely to choose a sexually unattractive poor man who seems rich over a sexually attractive rich man who seems poor.

When the marketplace became crowded with scores of similar products that mostly did what they were supposed to do, companies focused less on selling that product, and more on selling you a relationship with the product, and a means of announcing your own identity.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.

What we all have to avoid is the notion that we can buy our way out of our problems. Instead, the goal is to reduce our costs by extreme frugality. This is psychologically difficult because if there is one great certain confidence in American society it is this: you can buy your way out of almost anything. Other than a few things that will land you in jail even if you are rich, we tend to look for solutions that involve buying things. Having trouble with your marriage? Take a vacation. Pay a counsellor. Don't want to eat pesticides? Buy organic food! Indebted? Buy a book about how to get out. Worried about Peak Oil? Look at all the things there are to buy. Got a crosscut saw and a year's supply of dry milk yet? Don't want to give up driving and flying? We'll sell you some nice carbon offsets.

When deeply religious subjects view sacred iconography or reflect on their notion of God, brain scans reveal hyperactivity in the caudate nucleus, a part of the pleasure system that correlates with feelings of joy, love, and serenity. But Lindstrom and Calvert found that this same brain region lights up when subjects view images associated with strong brands like Ferrari or Apple.

When you buy a product, you don’t just buy the product: you buy everything that company stands for. Sisters, are your things rooted in peace?

When your underwear costs more than your child's education then you are in serious trouble" RjS

Whoever that came up with the idea of people having to have 'a dream' sure knew how to keep these creatures called human beings preoccupied.

With a beaming face celebrate the joyful day and rest not therein. For no one can take away his goods with him. Yea, no one returns again, who has gone hence.

With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but at home. A curious condition of a republic based roughly on the original Roman model is that it cannot allow true political parties to share in government. What then is a true political party: one that is based firmly in the interest of a class be it workers or fox hunters. Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property with two right wings. Corporate wealth finances each. Since the property party controls every aspect of media they have had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely uneducated by public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in consumerism.

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

Worth is not something you can buy for $39.99, nor something you can lose with 10 extra pounds. Self-judging people make good consumers. Start a revolution. Love yourself.

With the hollowing out of community by the market system, with its loss of structure, articulation, and form, comes the concomitant hollowing out of personality itself. Just as the spiritual and institutional ties that linked human beings together into vibrant social relations are eroded by the mass market, so the sinews that make for subjectivity, character, and self-definition are divested of form and meaning. The isolated, seemingly autonomous ego that bourgeois society celebrated as the highest achievement of "modernity" turns out to be the mere husk of a once fairly rounded individual whose very completeness as an ego was responsible because he or she was rooted in a fairly rounded and complete community.

writers like Jack Kerouac (who called himself an "urban Thoreau") set forth to redefine and rediscover ways to live in America without slogging through what Kerouac called the endless system of "work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume...

You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.

As riches grow, care follows, and a thirst For more and more.

All plenty which is not my God is poverty to me.

Your brain feels good to look at something at a distance, but the moment you receive it, that's it - in a short while your brain gets used to that specific trigger of possessing that specific object, then it keeps craving for a new trigger - new stimulant, and if you do not give your brain that specific new trigger, your brain will rebel against you, in the same way as an addict's brain rebels against the person.

Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself.

Consumerism is hard to describe when it's the ocean and we're the plankton.

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

Consumerism thrives on emotional voids.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

Don't underestimate the power of the vigilante consumer.

He has much who needs least. Do not create necessities for yourself.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

Every time we buy something we deepen our emotional deprivation and hence our need to buy something.

Having rationally endeavored to control nature, is he not now becoming the slave of the objects which he makes?

He who multiplies riches multiplies cares.

But prosperity without a soul is like a corpse whose heart has stopped beating. There is no life, only consumption.

I can't concern myself with how viewers feel.

I condemn the national gay press for its emphasis on consumerism.

I think that consumerism is intrinsically a pretty flawed social system.

I like to walk down Bond Street, thinking of all the things I don't desire.

It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.

It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.

Liberating oneself from the addiction of consumerism and careerism promotes inner peace.

I want a change, and a radical change. I want a change from an acquisitive society to a functional society, from a society of go-getters to a society of go-givers.

Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead.

My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.

Nature is telling us that if you don't respect the environment then you are living with artificial needs and a consumerism that is destroying the very conditions we need to survive.