Consumerism Quotes - Page 15

• Side by side with the miseries of underdevelopment...we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissable. This superdevelopment consists in an excessive availability of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups and makes people slaves of "possession" and immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better. This is the civilization of consumption, or "consumerism," which involves so much throwing away and waste.

  Pope John Paul II

  Civilization, Availability, People

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• Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying... We've shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Unique, People, Roles

  "World’s Designated Shoppers Drop" by Barbara Ehrenreich, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 10, 2008.

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• Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace.

  Thomas Merton

  Doe, Sake, Way

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• Day by day night after night Blinded by the neon lights Hurry here, hustlin' there No one's got the time to spare Money's tight, nothin' free Won't somebody come and rescue me? I am stranded, caught in the crossfire Stranded, caught in the crossfire! Tooth for tooth, eye for an eye Sell your soul just to buy, buy, buy Beggin' a dollar stealin' a dime Come on can't you see that I I am stranded, caught in the crossfire

  Stevie Ray Vaughan

  Eye, Night, Light

  Song: Crossfire

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• Economists use the word consume to mean "utilize economic goods," but the Shorter Oxford Dictionary's definition is more appropriate to ecologists: "To make away with or destroy; to waste or to squander; to use up." The economies that cater to the global consumer society are responsible for the lion's share of the damage that humans have inflicted on common global resources.

  Alan Thein Durning

  Mean, Oxford, Use

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• Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Rich Or Poor, Long

  Samuel Johnson (1824). “Works: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.135

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• Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Wise, World, Might

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “Collected Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.166, e-artnow

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• Unless the church is equipping believers to embrace the values and vision of the kingdom of God and turn away from the materialism, consumerism, greed, and power of the present age, it not only abandons its biblical mandate, it is rendered missionally ineffective.

  Alan Hirsch

  Biblical, Greed, Vision

  "The Faith of Leap: Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage (Shapevine)". Book by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, 2011.

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• Consumerism, what kind of car you have, what kind of house you have in the country and so on, and that is all very incidental when you examine the kind of person he may be. He may be a big bore, and then there is a person who hasn't done a thing in the world and he is a fascinating person.

  Emilio Pucci

  Country, Car, House

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon. Do not go from the slavery of the Communist regime to the slavery of consumerism.

  Pope John Paul II

  Coffee, Noon, Slavery

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• A sense of self has to be sought in the parade of images and products; and this culture becomes the main determinant upon morality, beliefs, and purpose, usurping more and more territory that formerly belonged to parents, teachers, community, priests, and politics alike.

  Jeremy Seabrook

  Teacher, Self, Community

  Jeremy Seabrook (1978). “What Went Wrong?: Why Hasn't Having More Made People Happier?”, Pantheon

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• We shuffle out of office buildings after being laid-off by draconian bosses; we sit on hold for ten minutes only to be told by a supervisor that the charge on our cable bill can't be removed; we click a crying emoji on Facebook as our last whimper of protest. So rather than end the story ["Ice Age"] with the expected violence and destruction of evil, I wanted to focus on the way the characters end up sabotaging their own community though their attachments to the consumerism of the old world.

  Alexander Weinstein

  Character, Ice, Attachment

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Our consumer economy peddles the notions "romantic consumerism" of finding "the one," of being the one. It's the narcissistic enhancement of, "I'm the one you stopped your nomadic life for." It's one thing when you have sex for the first time when you marry, but it's another thing altogether when you stop having sex with others when you marry. So the marital commitment becomes, "I must be really special. With me, you no longer think you can find better next door." Romantic consumerism is thinking you can't find better, younger or newer.

  Esther Perel

  Commitment, Thinking, Special

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• It's been a real success - one of the great business successes in the United States - to break down organization, to separate people too: it's part of consumerism. If you can drive people toward individual consumption, that's the highest goal in life. And furthermore, drive them into debt so they're trapped. You don't have to worry about a democracy function because people are trapped and they're alone.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Organization, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Consumerism has become a new religion, complete with its high priests at Which? and its fatwas against anyone with the temerity to try to sell anything at more than cost price ... It is a depressingly medieval outlook on economic life.

  Sean O'Grady

  Trying, Cost, Medieval

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• In F-111, I question the collusion between the Vietnam War, income taxes, consumerism, and advertising.

  James Rosen

  War, Vietnam, Income

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• Everything is deeply affected by the dominant culture. Consumerism is huge in the US. This is by far the wealthiest [nation], but also the biggest consumer in the world. Which means that a lot of things get used, a lot of things get wasted, and a lot of things get churned out in ways that are wasteful.

  Wangechi Mutu

  Mean, Way, Culture

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.

  Richard J. Foster

  Air, Toxic Waste, Earth

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• Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.

  Wendell Berry

  Military, Finals, Defeat

  Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.16, Counterpoint

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• The goals of development are always and everywhere stated in terms of consumer value packages standardized around the North Atlantic-and therefore always and everywhere imply more privileges for a few... Underdevelopment is the result of a state of mind common to both socialist and capitalist countries. Present development goals are neither desirable nor reasonable. Unfortunately antiimperialism is no antidote.

  Ivan Illich

  Country, Goal, Mind

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• The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Order, Ideas, Income

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2013). “Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics”, p.125, Westminster John Knox Press

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

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Favors, Argument, Consumption

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• The individual is denuded of everything but appetites, desires, and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation or commitment. It is a process of mutilation; and once this has been achieved, we are offered the consolation of reconstituting the abbreviated humanity out of the things and the goods around us, and the fantasies and vapors which they emit.

  Jeremy Seabrook

  Commitment, Humanity, Desire

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• The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television.

  Thomas Merton

  Children, Character, Reality

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• The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.

  Karl Marx

  Country, Character, Feet

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