Overconsumption Quotes - Page 9

• The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the wall. The writing just gets bigger. Something will eventually bring down the charming, infuriating naïveté of Americans that allows us our blithe consumption and cheerful ignorance of the secret ugliness that bring us whatever we want.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Wall, Ignorance, Writing

  Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.317, Faber & Faber

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• The boom squanders through malinvestment scarce factors of production and reduces the stock available through overconsumption; its alleged blessings are paid for by impoverishment.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Blessing, Factors Of Production, Scarce

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• Likewise, the world of action, of politics, is reduced to a conflict of views about how to keep the cycle of production and consumption going. Questions of ultimate purpose are excluded from the public world.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Views, Purpose, World

  Lesslie Newbigin (1988). “Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture”, p.32, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• We Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build a fire, we dig a little coal. But when we run out of all these things, then we will find out just how good we really are.

  Will Rogers

  Running, Cutting, Thinking

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• When I lost my faith in people I put my trust in things To avoid the disappointment Trusting people brings... I tried to do it all myself then Surrounded by my stuff All I found were limitations I could not rise above There are gadgets and contraptions Immaculate machines There's a program you can download now That will even dream your dreams It'll even dream you dreams For a monthly fee Clear up your complexion You get a hundred hours free Possessions cannot save you.

  John Gorka

  Dream, Disappointment, People

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• Based on technological research and the transformation of nature, industrialization constantly goes forward, giving proof of incessant creativity. While certain enterprises develop and are concentrated, others die or change their location. Thus new social problems are created: professional or regional unemployment, redeployment and mobility of persons, permanent adaptation of workers and disparity of conditions in the different branches of industry.

  Pope Paul VI

  Creativity, Giving, Branches

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• Before our eyes we have the results of ideologies such as Marxism, Nazism and fascism, and also of myths like racial superiority, nationalism and ethnic exclusivism. No less pernicious, though not always as obvious, are the effects of materialistic consumerism, in which the exaltation of the individual and the selfish satisfaction of personal aspirations become the ultimate goal of life. In this outlook, the negative effects on others are considered completely irrelevant.

  Pope John Paul II

  Selfish, Eye, Goal

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• So here we are in a country with more wheat and corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world-there's not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of than any other country ever had on the face of the earth-and yet we've got people starving. We'll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile.

  Will Rogers

  Country, Names, People

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• This is so rich a country that luxury has developed at the expense of necessities, and even the destitute partake of the luxury. We are the rich country of the world, like Dives at the feast. We must try hard, we must study to be poor like Lazarus at the gate, who was taken into Abraham's bosom.

  Dorothy Day

  Country, Taken, Luxury

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• Consumer sales depend on the habits and behaviors of consumers, and those who manipulate consumer markets cannot but address behavior and attitude. That is presumably the object of the multibillion-dollar global advertising industry. Tea drinkers are improbable prospects for Coke sales.

  Benjamin Barber

  Attitude, Tea, Dollars

  Benjamin Barber (2001). “Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy”, Ballantine Books

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• All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue.

  George Orwell

  Country, Struggle, Party

  George Orwell (1956). “The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage”, New York : Harcourt, Brace

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• It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Blessed, Giving, Able

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• Sufficient for the day is all that we can enjoy. We cannot eat or drink or wear more than the day's supply of food and raiment; the surplus gives us the care of storing it, and the anxiety of watching against a thief. One staff aids a traveller, but a bundle of staves is a heavy burden. Enough is not only as good as a feast, but is all that the greatest glutton can truly enjoy. This is all that we should expect; a craving for more than this is ungrateful. When our Father does not give us more, we should be content with his daily allowance.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Father, Giving, Ungrateful

  Charles Spurgeon (2016). “Morning and Evening”, p.182, Discovery House

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• Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Success, Men

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.249

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• Living well is the best revenge.

  George Herbert

  Inspirational, Life, Happiness

  George Herbert (1853). “The poetical works of George Herbert [and The synagogue, by C. Harvey.]. With life, critical diss., and notes, by G. Gilfillan”, p.308

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• Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Self Improvement, Desire

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1811). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, L. L. D.: In Twelve Volumes”, p.163

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• Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a 'disposable' culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new.

  Pope Francis

  Culture, Oppression, Something New

  "Pope Francis: Capitalism is 'a new tyranny'" by Katie McDonough, www.salon.com. November 26, 2013.

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• ...the tragedy of consumerism: one acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus one never truly enjoys them. One has without truly having. The consumer is right-there is pleasure to be had in good things, a sacred and almost unspeakable pleasure, but the consumer wrongly thinks that one finds this pleasure by having more and more possessions instead of possessing them more truly through grateful contemplation. And here we are, living in an economy that perpetuates this tragedy.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Grateful, Thinking, Tragedy

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• We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf (cf. Ex 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose. The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.

  Pope Francis

  Real, Men, Cfs

  "The Joy of the Gospel: Evangelii Gaudium". Book by Pope Francis, w2.vatican.va. November 26, 2013.

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• The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Inspirational, Motivational, Men

  "Wealth," North American Review, June 1889

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