Best Consumerism Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 10

“It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies.”

Source: The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe

“Let us be bold enough to ask ourselves as Christians whether the Church of the Lord Jesus in the United States has anything to say to our nation and its ideologies of materialism, possessiveness, and the worship of financial security. Are we courageous enough to be a sign of contradiction to consumerism through our living faith in Jesus Christ? Are we committed enough to his gospel to become a countercurrent to the drift?”

Source: The Signature of Jesus

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.”

Knows Want Mind Littles Made Dies Pay Mystery Ready Window Raises Profit Neighbor Cards Our Future Vacation Consumerism Your Future Annuals Overconsumption Drawers

Book:A Country of Marriage: Poems

Source: A Country of Marriage: Poems

“Democracy encourages a taste for physical gratification; this taste, if it becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only; and materialism, in its turn, hurries them on with mad impatience to these same delights; such is the fatal circle within which democratic nations are driven round. It were well that they should see the danger and hold back.”

Source: Democracy in America - Vol. I. and II.

“McWorld is a product of popular culture driven by expansionist commerce. Its template is American, its form style. Its goods are as much images as matériel, an aesthetic as well as a product line. It is about culture as commodity, apparel as ideology. Its symbols are Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Cadillac motorcars hoisted from the roadways, where they once represented a mode of transportation, to the marquees of global market cafés like Harley-Davidson's and the Hard Rock where they become icons of lifestyle.”

“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?”

World Running Water Simple Poor Demand India Blame Farmers Consumerism Pumps Overconsumption Gasoline Gallons

Author:Richard J. Foster

“We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.”

Earth Air Waste Built Toxic Consumerism Overconsumption Toxic Waste

Author:Richard J. Foster

“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.”

Thinking Way Wells Jobs Values Religious Prayer Influence Danger Praying Taste Capacity Consumers Materialism Consumerism Preference Our Prayers Overconsumption Tutelage

Author:Robert Wuthnow

“Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.”

Military Finals Defeat Consumerism Conquest Thorough Overconsumption

Book:The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Source: The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

“The goals of development are always and everywhere stated in terms of consumer value packages standardized around the North Atlantic-and therefore always and everywhere imply more privileges for a few... Underdevelopment is the result of a state of mind common to both socialist and capitalist countries. Present development goals are neither desirable nor reasonable. Unfortunately antiimperialism is no antidote.”

“The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes.”

Source: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics

“The illusion that consumption - and its correlative, income - is desirable probably stems from too great preoccupation with what Knight calls "one-use goods," such as food and fuel, where the utilization and consumption of the good are tightly bound together in a single act or event. ... any economy in the consumption of fuel that enables us to maintain warmth or to generate power with lessened consumption again leaves us better off. ... there is no great value in consumption itself.”

“Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself.”

Argument Favors Consumption Consumerism Overconsumption

Author:Kenneth E. Boulding

“The individual is denuded of everything but appetites, desires, and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation or commitment. It is a process of mutilation; and once this has been achieved, we are offered the consolation of reconstituting the abbreviated humanity out of the things and the goods around us, and the fantasies and vapors which they emit.”

Humans Has Beens Desire Humanity Individual Process Fantasy Taste Commitment Obligation Goods Appetite Consumerism Consolation Overconsumption Vapor Mutilation

Author:Jeremy Seabrook

“A sense of self has to be sought in the parade of images and products; and this culture becomes the main determinant upon morality, beliefs, and purpose, usurping more and more territory that formerly belonged to parents, teachers, community, priests, and politics alike.”

Self Purpose Culture Belief Parent Community Teacher Products Morality Priests Territory Consumerism Sense Of Self Parades Overconsumption

Book:What Went Wrong?: Why Hasn't Having More Made People Happier?

Source: What Went Wrong?: Why Hasn't Having More Made People Happier?

“The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television.”

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.”

“The philosophers of industrialism, from Bacon to Bentham, from Smith to Marx, insisted that the improvement of man's condition was the highest requirement of morality. But in what did the improvement consist? The answer seemed so obvious to them that they did not bother to justify it: the expansion and fulfillment of the material wants of man, and the spread of these benefits, from the few who had once preempted them, to the many who had so long lived on the scraps Dives had thrown into the gutter.”

“We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly - the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape.”

Way Soul Moments Fighting Lost Moral Poverty Our Lives Materials Shapes Ancient Liberation Indifference Attachment Consumerism Athletic Overconsumption Fling

Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

“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.”

Country Character Fighting Wish Achieve Skills Demand Standards Bottom Acquire Live By Consumerism Environmentalism Overconsumption Standards Of Living Robbery Robbing

Book:What Are People For?: Essays

Source: What Are People For?: Essays

“We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and for each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependant on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.”

Thinking Knows Waste Conviction Excuse Obstacles Consumerism Catastrophe Addict Inviting Overconsumption

Book:What Are People For?: Essays

Source: What Are People For?: Essays

“The sense that materialism has gotten out of hand is magnified by the pressures facing middle-class American families.”

Hands Class Middle Pressure Middle Class Materialism Consumerism Overconsumption American Family

Author:Robert Wuthnow

“By the same token, frozen dinners, a microwave oven, a dishwasher, and an illegal immigrant hired to clean the house and take one's cat to the vet would have seemed like the epitome of materialism in another time, but now provide the only means available for two-career couples to work hard enough at their jobs to earn the salaries they need to pay for those labor-saving amenities.”

“The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says: "You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires."”

World Self Desire Powerful Rich Rights Late Destruction Slavery Satisfying Consumerism Reign Self Destruction Overconsumption

Book:GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD

Source: GREAT BOOKS OF THE WESTERN WORLD

“Their property held them in chains...chains which shackled their courage and choked their faith and hampered their judgment and throttled their soul...If they stored up their treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and a thief within their own household...They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves.”

Ifs Thinking Soul Heaven Enemy Masters Judgment Property Slave Treasure Chains Owners Thieves Household Consumerism Overconsumption Treasures In Heaven

Author:Cyprian

“The biggest untapped source of energy today is our youth. I am from an age of consumerism, but my two daughters are young enough to change the way their generation thinks.”

Thinking Way Two Enough Age Today Young Energy Generations Youth Source Daughter Consumerism Two Daughters

Author:Mike Horn

“I think about capitalism, consumerism, our consumptive nature as a species approaching the 21st century. I certainly don't have the answers.”

Thinking Answers Century Capitalism Species Consumerism 21st Century

Book:A voice in the wilderness: conversations with Terry Tempest Williams

Source: A voice in the wilderness: conversations with Terry Tempest Williams

“We continue to be spilled on by consumerism even though we know it doesn't make us happy.”

Knows Consumerism

Author:Russell Brand

“All the wants which disturb human life, which make us uneasy to ourselves, quarrelsome with others, and unthankful to God, which weary us in vain labors and foolish anxieties, which carry us from project to project, from place to place in a poor pursuit of we don't know what, are the wants which neither God, nor nature, nor reason hath subjected us to, but are solely infused into us by pride, envy, ambition, and covetousness.”

Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love

“We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart's capacity for joy.”

“I have discovered that many of the things I thought were priceless are as cheap as costume jewelry, and much of what I labeled worthless was, all the time, filled with the kind of beauty that directly nourishes my soul... Now I think that the vast majority of us "normal" people spend our lives trashing our treasures and treasuring our trash. We bustle around trying to create the impression that we are hip, imperturbable, omniscient, in perfect control, when in fact we are awkward and scared and bewildered.”

“I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don't need. I'm anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that's it.”

People Needs Believe Ideas Whole I Believe Black Four Consumers Pairs Goods Consumerism

Author:Paul Auster

“Everything is deeply affected by the dominant culture. Consumerism is huge in the US. This is by far the wealthiest [nation], but also the biggest consumer in the world. Which means that a lot of things get used, a lot of things get wasted, and a lot of things get churned out in ways that are wasteful.”

World Way Mean Used Culture Nations Huge Consumers Affected Consumerism Dominant Dominant Culture

Author:Wangechi Mutu

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

“Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.”

Needs Body Care Desire Suffering Humility Comfort Saint Consumerism Defects Overconsumption

Author:Teresa of Avila

“In F-111, I question the collusion between the Vietnam War, income taxes, consumerism, and advertising.”

War Taxes Income Advertising Vietnam Consumerism Vietnam War Income Tax Collusion

Author:James Rosen

“Consumerism has become a new religion, complete with its high priests at Which? and its fatwas against anyone with the temerity to try to sell anything at more than cost price ... It is a depressingly medieval outlook on economic life.”

Trying Economic Cost Sells Priests Consumerism Outlook Medieval

Author:Sean O'Grady

“You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.”

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

Literature Hardest Consumerism Hardest Thing

Author:Kin Hubbard

“Consumerism, what kind of car you have, what kind of house you have in the country and so on, and that is all very incidental when you examine the kind of person he may be. He may be a big bore, and then there is a person who hasn't done a thing in the world and he is a fascinating person.”

World Kind May Persons Country Done Bigs House Car Fascinating Bores Consumerism

Author:Emilio Pucci

“Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon. Do not go from the slavery of the Communist regime to the slavery of consumerism.”

Drink Slavery Coffee Awake Communist Regimes Consumerism Noon

Author:Pope John Paul II

“What is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.”

Want Might Capitalism Consumers Tunes Capitalist Consumerism

Book:Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

Source: Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

“My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.”

Firsts Children Our Children Your Children Consumerism

Author:Bill Bryson

“Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.”

“They didn't need to be specifically South American or Latin American. Instead we discovered we were talking about human beings in general. We realized that these are not issues only pertinent to Latin America: poverty, misery, consumerism, etc.”

Needs Humans America Human Beings Talking Poverty Issues Misery South Etc Latin Consumerism Latin America Pertinent Latin American

Author:Alex Abreu

“'As Long As I Know I'm Getting Paid' is a satire. Lyrically, I want to be direct. With my history in Fall Out Boy, there's some expectation that I'm going to be lyrically obtuse. But that song is a straight-faced satire of consumerism.”

Knows Want Long Song Fall Boys Expectations Direct Paid Satire Consumerism Fall Out Boy

Author:Patrick Stump

“There is ugliness of mass production and consumerism, the banality of advertising. Although it claims to do just the opposite, it's predicated on disempowering and effacing persons.”

Persons Mass Opposites Claims Productions Advertising Consumerism Ugliness Banality Mass Production

Author:Stephanie Mills

“We cannot have a free market since it does not really set us free. It's free for interest, speculation and consumerism to create false needs.”

Needs Doe Interest Consumerism Speculation Free Market

Author:Tariq Ramadan

“Nature is telling us that if you don't respect the environment then you are living with artificial needs and a consumerism that is destroying the very conditions we need to survive.”

Ifs Needs Environment Conditions Destroying Artificial Consumerism

Author:Tariq Ramadan

“What worries some people about consumption (and I confess at the outset to be one of these ambivalent creatures, fat but troubled in paradise) is that the affluent, technologically advanced West seems more and more focused not on consuming to live but living to consume. The problem with consumption, and the consumer capitalism that has pushed it to feverish historical extremes, is that it has become so all-consuming.”

People Problem Seems Worry Creatures Capitalism Historical West Extremes Focused Fats Consumers Paradise Consumption Consumerism Consuming Overconsumption Affluent Ambivalent

Author:Rodney Clapp

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Consumerism Quotes