Consumerism Quotes - Page 2

• We live in an era of consumerism and it's all about desire-based consumerism and it has nothing to do with things we actually need.

  Aloe Blacc

  Desire, Needs, Eras

  "Aloe Blacc Discusses His Grand Scheme to Get Some Dollars". Interview with Brandon Deroche, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 15, 2011.

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• Consumers have not been told effectively enough that they have huge power and that purchasing and shopping involve a moral choice.

  Anita Roddick

  Shopping, Choices, Moral

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• We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.

  T. S. Eliot

  Organization, Humanity, Progress

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Christianity and Culture”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The things you own end up owning you.

  Brad Pitt

  Fighting, Simple Life, Clubs

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• Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Determine, Overconsumption, True Worth

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• The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more.

  Kin Hubbard

  Literature, Hardest, Hardest Thing

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• It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Greed, Abundance, Produce

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• There’s no such religious force in the West as powerful as consumerism.

  Alan Hirsch

  Religious, Powerful, West

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• An active propaganda machinery controlled bv the world's largest corporations constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause our distress, and economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to the human species.

  David Korten

  Historical, Growth, Causes

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• You can never get enough of what you don't want.

  Wayne Dyer

  Motivational, Happiness, Spiritual

  Wayne W. Dyer (2009). “Staying on the Path: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Long, Hatred

  Noam Chomsky (2016). “Who Rules the World?”, p.54, Metropolitan Books

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• To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.

  Akhenaton

  Inspirational, Happiness, Happy

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• Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Funny, Money, Greedy

  "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook". Book by Mignon McLaughlin, 1981.

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• Since the governments are in the pockets of businesses, who's going to control this most powerful institution? Business is more powerful than politics, and it's more powerful than religion. So it's going to have to be the vigilante consumer.

  Anita Roddick

  Powerful, Government, Pockets

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• It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media.

  Christopher Lasch

  Reality, Media, Logic

  Christopher Lasch (1991). “The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics”, p.519, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.

  Susan Sontag

  Reality, Citizens, Pollution

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.24, Macmillan

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• Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

  Hippocrates

  Excess, Overconsumption

  "Catholic Morality: Selected Sayings and Some Account of Various Religions". Book by E. Comyns Durnford, p. 90, 1915.

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• Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Simple, Clothes, Simplicity

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.212, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Make it new is the message not just of modern art but of modern consumerism, of which modern art is largely a mirror image.

  Christopher Lasch

  Art, Mirrors, Messages

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• the metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags.

  Shana Alexander

  Bags, Plastic, Metabolism

  Shana Alexander (1976). “Talking woman”

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• There must be more to life than having everything.

  Maurice Sendak

  Life, Environmental, Materialism

  Maurice Sendak, William Knowlton Zinsser (1998). “Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra...

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Names, Guy, Poverty

  "Fight Club". www.imdb.com. 1999.

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• You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

  Eric Hoffer

  Happiness, Being Happy, Simple

  "Living Our Values, Closing the Ethical Gap" by Jeffrey Rubin, bigthink.com.

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• The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something that they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do.

  Wendell Berry

  Country, Character, Fighting

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.201, Counterpoint

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• Consumerism is our national religion.

  Jennifer Stone

  Jennifer Stone (1988). “Mind Over Media: Essays on Film and Television”

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