Obsolescence Quotes

• Obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it's just the beginning.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Fashion, Ends

  Marshall McLuhan (2010). “The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion and Media”, p.139, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence.

  Brooks Stevens

  Environmental, Sustainability, Economy

  Quoted in Vance Packard The Waste Makers (1960), ch.6. This is thought to be the first use of the phrase 'planned obsolescence'.

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• Planned obsolescence is not really a new concept. God used it with people.

  Robert Orben

  Funny Life, People, Used

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• The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence.

  Art Linkletter

  Life, Men, Infancy Is

  A Child's Garden of Misinformation (1965) ch. 8

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• Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence, and anyone who can read without moving his lips should know it by now.

  Brooks Stevens

  Moving On, Moved On, Lips

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• Instead, most colleges are studies in obsolescence.

  Kent McCord

  College, Study

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• Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

  Tony Benn

  Suffering, Today, Galloping

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• Starving the future to feed the present is a mistake - it leads to obsolescence and stagnation. Sometimes it is hard to make this understood.

  Burton Richter

  Mistake, Sometimes, Starving

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• In an age of multiple and massive innovations, obsolescence becomes the major obsession.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Innovation, Age, Obsession

  "Innovation is obsolete". Evergreen review, Volume 15, Issues 86-94, Grove Press, (p. 64), 1971.

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• Obsolescence and death, the reign of the archaic, the abandoned, and the corny: Really, if you saw Windows 3.0 on the sidewalk outside the building, would you bend over and pick it up?!?

  Bruce Sterling

  Reign, Saws, Corny

  "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole". Talk at Long Now Foundation, 2004.

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• The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Stars, Taken, Sunset

  Jean Baudrillard, Francesco Proto, Keith Broadfoot (2006). “Mass Identity Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard”, Academy Press

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• Name anything - high-definition TV, computer obsolescence - and I'm pretty much annoyed by it.

  Martin Freeman

  Names, Annoyed, Definitions

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• But planned obsolescence is possible only if the rate of technological change is contained.

  David Harvey

  Technological Change, Rate, Ifs

  "The Limits To Capital". Book by David Harvey, 1982.

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• It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.

  Mary McCarthy

  Hippie, Law, Marketing

  Mary McCarthy (1968). “Hanoi”, George Weidenfeld & Nicholson

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• Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk.

  Maureen Dowd

  Believe, Rumor, Journalism

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• Obsolescence is the very hallmark of progress.

  Henry Ford II

  Progress, Hallmark

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• Obsolescence is a factor which says that the new thing I bring you is worth more than the unused value of the old thing.

  Charles Kettering

  Old Things, New Things, Factors

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• Obsolescence is the key to innovation.

  Homaro Cantu

  Keys, Innovation, Chef

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• Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.

  Aldous Huxley

  War, People, Three

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• Obsolescence is the moment of superabundance.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Moments

  Yeats Studies: An International Journal, Issue 2 (p. 135), 1972.

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• Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence...we make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then the next year we deliberately introduce something that will make these products old-fashioned, out of date, obsolete.

  Brooks Stevens

  Years, People, Next Year

  Quoted in Vance Packard The Waste Makers (1960), ch.6. This is thought to be the first use of the phrase 'planned obsolescence'.

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• Publishers, naturally, loathe used books and have developed strategies to depress the secondhand market. They bring out new, even more expensive editions of popular textbooks every three to four years, in a classic cycle of planned obsolescence.

  James Surowiecki

  Depressing, Book, Years

  "Class Action". www.newyorker.com. November 7, 2005.

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• Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

  Studs Terkel

  Men, People, Pieces

  Studs Terkel (1975). “Working”, HarperCollins

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• In the human heart there is a built-in obsolescence factor. It does not matter how powerful and influential you are, how much education you have, how selfcontrolled or holy you consider yourself—your heart, if you do not guard it, will break down.

  K.P. Yohannan

  Powerful, Heart, Doe

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• We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us.

  Jacque Fresco

  Health, Cities, Political

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