Consumerism Quotes - Page 7

• If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.

  Vicki Robin

  Money, Wealth, Enough

  Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez, Monique Tilford (2008). “Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Ind ependence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century”, p.39, Penguin

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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. What do you actually need? Food, clothing and shelter. Everything else is entertainment. It's just the idea that we're so wasteful. I think a lot of self - identity and inner - personal development is hampered by consumerism and capitalism because we see ourselves as a reflection of the TV, rather than as a reflection of the people who are around us, truly.

  Aloe Blacc

  Reflection, Thinking, People

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end... Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I've decried consumerism. Consumerism is what we are. It is, in a sense, a holy impulse. A human being is someone who joyfully goes in pursuit of things, brings them home, then immediately starts planning how to get more.

  George Saunders

  Home, Men, Pieces

  5 Copy quote

• Unfortunately, we live at a moment in which ignorance appears to be one of the defining features of American political and cultural life. Ignorance has become a form of weaponized refusal to acknowledge the violence of the past, and revels in a culture of media spectacles in which public concerns are translated into private obsessions, consumerism and fatuous entertainment.

  Henry Giroux

  Ignorance, Past, Political

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.

  Sarah Vowell

  Aztec, Office, Waiting

  "The Partly Cloudy Patriot". Book by Sarah Vowell, 2001.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Book, Teaching

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.66, Ballantine Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

  Jimmy Carter

  Strong, Hard Work, Self

  Energy and the National Goals - A Crisis of Confidence, delivered 15 July, 1979

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We desperately need to recognise that we are the guests, not the masters, of nature and adopt a new paradigm for development, based on the costs and benefits to all people, and bound by the limits of nature herself rather than the limits of technology and consumerism.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Technology, People, Development

  "Planet Savers : 301 Extraordinary Environmentalists". Book by Kevin Desmond, 2008.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• The danger, then, is that materialism is not only shaping how we live but the way we think as well. It influences our consumer tastes and our preference for high-paying jobs, but it also alters our capacity to pray, the nature of our prayers, and the ways in which religious tutelage instructs our values.

  Robert Wuthnow

  Religious, Jobs, Prayer

  5 Copy quote

• I don't mean to criticize anyone in any way that I wouldn't criticize myself. I think people should have fun, and have a good time, and enjoy the luck that we have to be lazy and dwell in consumerism. But I think that it's a balance. And our job as actors is empathy.

  Natalie Portman

  Jobs, Fun, Mean

  "Inside the Actor's Studio". Interview with James Lipton, New School University, November 21, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great danger in today's world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor.

  Pope Francis

  Heart, World, Today

  Pope Francis (2015). “The Spirit of St Francis: Inspiring Words on Faith, Love and Creation”, p.92, SPCK

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination -- the usefulness of toys -- and strictly celebrates consumerism.

  Armond White

  Names, Imagination, Stories

  7 Copy quote

• With breathtaking rapidity, we are destroying all that was lovely to look at and turning America into a prison house of the spirit. The affluent society, with relentless single-minded energy, is turning our cities, most of suburbia and most of our roadways into the most affluent slum on earth.

  Eric Sevareid

  Cities, America, House

  Eric Sevareid (1964). “This is Eric Sevareid”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.

  George MacDonald

  Power, Contentment, Want

  George MacDonald (1884). “Donal Grant”, p.3, CCEL

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells?

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Men, Thieves, Goods

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.76, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the poor farmer of India is unable to buy a gallon of gasoline to run his simple water pump because the world's demand has priced him out of the market, who is to blame?

  Richard J. Foster

  Running, Simple, Water

  4 Copy quote

• Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle. In many parts of the world society is given to instant gratification and consumerism while remaining indifferent to the damage which these attitudes cause. Simplicity, moderation and discipline, as well as a spirit of sacrifice, must become part of everyday life, lest all suffer the negative consequences of the careless habits of a few.

  Pope John Paul II

  Attitude, Sacrifice, Discipline

  17 Copy quote

• Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.

  Ernest Becker

  Drinking, Men, Shopping

  Ernest Becker (1985). “The Denial of Death”, New York : Free Press

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a small state.... To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Thinking, Order

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.369, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• New pressures are causing ever more people to find their main satisfaction in their consumptive role rather than in their productive role. And these pressures are bringing forward such traits as pleasure-mindedness, self-indulgence, materialism, and passivity as conspicuous elements of the American character.

  Vance Packard

  Character, Self, People

  34 Copy quote

• I saw that a humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might live on a little; and that where the heart is set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving, but that commonly with an increase of wealth, the desire of wealth increased.

  John Woolman

  Heart, Humble, Blessing

  John Woolman (2013). “journal”, p.35, Lulu.com

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one who had once learned to identify happiness with wealth ever felt that he had wealth enough.

  Joy Davidman

  Wealth, Enough, Overconsumption

  Joy Davidman (1985). “Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments”, p.120, Westminster John Knox Press

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• America always put forth this phony melting pot theory, but it's a reality now. They couldn't accomplish the melting pot economically; they couldn't accomplish it politically, or through education and science. But America has become a consumer society, and I see young people in the cities - of all colors and races - hanging out together over consumerism.

  Russell Means

  Reality, Color, Cities

  Source: progressive.org

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's no surprise that if you look at the development of the economy, of consumerism, of all these things that have gotten out of hand over the last hundred years, it happened when men were purposeless, when they didn't actually have a legitimate reason to be moving the species forward because the machines were doing all the hard work.

  Peter Buffett

  Moving, Hard Work, Men

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The latest trend seems to be these DJs doing pre-recorded sets, in perfect pitch with the lights & acts on stage. Everything is centred around the action from the stage. It doesn't even demand action coming from the crowd! Passive consumerism or something. Mayhem with an overwhelming sound that isn't actually good music. More like diarrhoea.

  Eddy de Clercq

  Light, Perfect, Sound

  Source: thequietus.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source