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Quote by Ella Fitzgerald

“You take romance - I'll take Jell-O.”

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Ella Fitzgerald, an American jazz vocalist, is known as the 'First Lady of Jazz'. Born on April 25, 1917, and passing away on June 15, 1996, Fitzgerald's unique voice and technique had a profound impact on the development of jazz music. more

“A large percentage of those living in developed societies are told what brand of soda they should drink, what cigarettes they should smoke, what clothes and shoes they should wear, what they should eat and what brand of food they should buy. Their political ideas are supplied in the same way. Every year a trillion dollars is spent on advertising.”

Way Should Years Ideas Political Drink Clothes Dollars Shoes Advertising Brands Smoke Cigarette Consumerism Percentages Overconsumption Soda Clothes And Shoes

Book:War, Racism and Economic Injustice: The Global Ravages of Capitalism

Source: War, Racism and Economic Injustice: The Global Ravages of Capitalism

“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.”

Source: The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage

“Can we reasonably expect happiness from an insatiable appetite which, no matter how it stuffs its belly, is still psychologically like Oliver Twist in the poorhouse, holding up an empty bowl and begging, "I want some more"? Isn't it possible that our dream of the good society contained, from the beginning, a hidden violation of the Tenth Commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods"?”

Source: Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments

“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.”

Source: Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy

“If we were built, what were we built for? ... Why do we have this amazing collection of sinews, senses, and sensibilities? Were we really designed in order to recline on the couch, extending our wrists perpendicular to the floor so we can flick through the television's offerings? Were we really designed in order to shop some more so the economy can grow some more? Or were we designed to experience the great epiphanies that come from contact with each other and with the natural world?”

Ifs World Order Grows Natural Economy Television Built Senses Contact Collections Shops Offering Sensibility Consumerism Natural World Couches Wrists Epiphany Overconsumption Extending

Author:Bill McKibben

“In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage.”

“In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves-all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.”

People Thinking Ideas States Earth Term Broken Offers Forgotten Meaningful Contact Motive Consumerism Helpless Dependence Overconsumption

Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

“Man today is fascinated by the possibility of buying, more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption hungry... To buy the latest gadget, the latest model of anything that is on the market, is the dream of everybody, in comparison to which the real pleasure in use is quite secondary. Modern man, if the dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world.”

Quote by Ella Fitzgerald

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