Consumerism Quotes - Page 10

• Language is wild - you can't fence it or tell it what to do - and it's the same with people. Even under the worst excesses of Stalinism or consumerism, the human spirit will still express itself.

  Jay Griffiths

  People, Excess, Spirit

  "Call of the wild" by Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. June 6, 2007.

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• The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Saving, Individual, Consuming

  "The New Industrial State".

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• Put two things together which have never been put together before, and some schmuck will buy it.

  George Carlin

  Two, Together, Schmucks

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• We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Commitment, Giving

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• Gentrification and consumerism... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen.

  Tom Hayden

  Beach, Character, Venice

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• With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Perfect One, Degrees, Needs

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• Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.

  Plutarch

  Doe, Needs, Pennies

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• If we do not bear the cross of the Master, we will have to bear the cross of the world, with all its earthly goods. Which cross have you taken up? Pause and consider.

  Sadhu Sundar Singh

  Taken, World, Bears

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• Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste.

  George Perkins Marsh

  Science, Men, Long

  George Perkins Marsh (1864). “Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action”, p.35, New York : C. Scribner

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• All of us experience the sad effects of blind submission to consumerism. In the first place it represents crass materialism. At the same time it represents a radical dissatisfaction because one quickly learns that the more one possesses, the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled.

  Pope John Paul II

  Want, Firsts, Materialism

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• Only the rich can achieve enlightenment because the poor are too busy looking for fridge freezers.

  Rajneesh

  Enlightenment, Busy, Rich

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

  Cal Thomas

  Heart, Soul, Prosperity

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• But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then.

  William Ralph Inge

  Powerful, Men, Average

  William Ralph Inge (1920). “Outspoken Essays”

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• The money economy thus leaves a large ecological footprint, defined as the amount of land and resources required to meet a typical consumer's needs. For example, with only about 4% of the world's population, the United States, the largest money economy, consumes in excess of one-quarter of the world's energy and materials and generates in excess of 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Land, Energy, Typical

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• The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Running, Time

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.28, Graphic Arts Books

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• When I walk into a grocery store and look at all the products you can choose, I say, "My God!" No king ever had anything like I have in my grocery store today.

  Bill Gates

  Kings, Looks, Today

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• Consumerism diverts us from thinking about women's rights, it stops us from thinking about Iraq, it stops us from thinking about what's going on in Africa - it stops us from thinking in general.

  Pink

  Thinking, Rights, Iraq

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• I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don't need. I'm anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that's it.

  Paul Auster

  Believe, Ideas, People

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• Two opposing gospels are fighting one another for the soul of our nation and, increasingly, the world: the gospel of consumption and the gospel of peace.

  Leonard Sweet

  Fighting, Two, Soul

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• Water and petrol both come from the earth, and though they seem to be alike and even the same, they are in nature and purpose exact opposites, for the one extinguishes fire and the other adds fuel to it. So also the world and its treasures, the heart and its thirst for God are alike His creation. Now the result of the attempt to satisfy the heart with the wealth and pride and honours of this world is the same as if one tried to put out a fire with petrol, for the heart can only find ease and satisfaction in Him who created both it and the longing desire of which it is conscious.

  Sadhu Sundar Singh

  Heart, Pride, Fire

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• We are determined not to take as the aim of our life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure, nor to accumulate wealth while millions are hungry and dying. We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.

  Nhat Hanh

  Sensual, Dying, Energy

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Being Peace”, p.110, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Who is the covetous man? One for whom plenty is not enough.

  Saint Basil

  Men, Enough, Overconsumption

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• We did not choose to believe that personal choice is the highest human virtue. Rather, we were taught, formed, forced to believe nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen. The irony is that the belief that nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen is a belief that we have not personally chosen! The supermarket and shopping mall have been our school.

  William Henry Willimon

  Believe, School, Shopping

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• We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers-that is to say, as markets.

  Neil Postman

  Children, Objectivity, Ideas

  Neil Postman (2011). “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”, p.61, Vintage

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• I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

  Paul the Apostle

  Giving, Secret, Needs

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