Overconsumption Quotes - Page 4

• It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

  John D. Rockefeller

  Happiness, Laughter, Men

  John D. Rockefeller (2015). “John D. Rockefeller on Making Money: Advice and Words of Wisdom on Building and Sharing Wealth”, p.19, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Give the public the 'image' of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Reality, Thinking, Television Commercials

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.12, Open Road Media

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• 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.

  Jeremy Seabrook

  Commitment, Humanity, Desire

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• Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Leadership, Peace, Military

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1958). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957”, p.152, Best Books on

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• You have found that you were more secure before you accumulated so much. See what greed has imposed on you: You have filled your house and now you fear burglars. You have hoarded money and lost sleep. See what greed has commanded you: "Do this!" And you did it.

  Saint Augustine

  Sleep, House, Greed

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• When humans act like animals, they become the most dangerous of animals to themselves and other humans, and this is because of another critical difference between humans and animals: Whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far more gross and capacious than physical ones. Only humans squander and hoard, murder and pillage because of notions.

  Wendell Berry

  Animal, Differences, Limits

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• To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in terms of money, is not acceptable because it is not realistic. I am thinking as I believe we must think if we wish to discuss the best uses of people, places, and things, and if we wish to give affection some standing in our thoughts.

  Wendell Berry

  Believe, Thinking, People

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth”, p.80, Counterpoint Press

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• Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums. It requires neither a log cabin nor a hairshirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar.

  David Shi

  Beautiful, Self, Essence

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• Our present culture, however, specializes in inflaming endless lust for possessions with advertisements that constantly convince us that we need more (particularly to create the ease we have never found). The marketers don't tell us much about their products, but they spend a great deal of energy (and enormous amounts of money) appealing to our fears and dreams. Thus, the idolatry of possessions plays to the deeper idolatry of our selves-and in an endlessly consuming society, persons are always remaking themselves with new belongings.

  Marva Dawn

  Dream, Self, Convince Us

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• So many sins against the poor cry out to high heaven! One of the most deadly sins is to deprive the laborer of his hire. There is another: to instill in him paltry desires so compulsive that he is willing to sell his liberty and his honor to satisfy them. We are all guilty of concupiscence, but newspapers, radios, television, and battalions of advertising men (woe to that generation!) deliberately stimulate our desires, the satisfaction of which so often means the degradation of the family.

  Dorothy Day

  Mean, Men, Heaven

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• Many Christians, though keenly sensitive to the dangers of greed and discontent that come with an economy of continually increasing consumption, nevertheless feel that it is worth risking if only it can end man's physical miseries. The trouble is that it can't. In a finite world, continually increasing consumption is just not possible.

  Joy Davidman

  Christian, Men, Greed

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• It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Greed, Consciousness, Consumerism

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• It is not earthly riches which make us or our sons happy; for they must either be lost by us in our lifetime, or be possessed when we are dead, by whom we know not, or perhaps by whom we would not.

  Saint Augustine

  Son, Riches, Lifetime

  Saint Augustine of Hippo, Catholic Way Publishing (2015). “The City of God”, p.231, Catholic Way Publishing

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• The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air access remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.

  Wendell Berry

  Military, Independent, Technology

  Wendell Berry (2015). “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture”, p.16, Counterpoint

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• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Vacation, Mind, Cards

  Wendell Berry (2013). “A Country of Marriage: Poems”, p.16, Counterpoint Press

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• I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?

  Wendell Berry

  Dream, Thinking, People

  Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

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• We are determined not to take as the aim of our life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure, nor to accumulate wealth while millions are hungry and dying. We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.

  Nhat Hanh

  Sensual, Dying, Energy

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Being Peace”, p.110, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• In fast-moving, progress-conscious America, the consumer expects to be dizzied by progress. If he could completely understand advertising jargon he would be badly disappointed. The half-intelligibility which we expect, or even hope, to find in the latest product language personally reassures each of us that progress is being made: that the pace exceeds our ability to follow.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Moving, America, Progress

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

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• 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

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• The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Money, Waiting, Challenges

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.305, Random House

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• If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Art, Journey

  William Shakespeare, Charles Knight (1843). “The Complete Works of W. Shakspere: Illustrated with Many Valuable Literary Notes from Johnson, Steevens, Malone, Drake, Chalmers, Coleridge, Lamb, Schlegel, Hazlitt, Ch. Knight, and Other Distinguished Commentators with Large Introductory Notices Prefixed to Each Play ...”

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• The whole attempt to advance the kind of consumer society that depends for its growth on the ceaseless stimulation of unlimited covetousness among the rich, while the poor majority rot in their poverty-this is surely something against which a Christian should be a nonconformist.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Christian, Growth, Majority

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• To the ideal of high consumption and the downgrading of spiritual values corresponds a conception of injustice that centers exclusively on the problem of consumption; and equality in consumption cannot be achieved except by violence.

  Jacques Ellul

  Spiritual, Downgrading, Violence

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• With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Perfect One, Degrees, Needs

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• Water and petrol both come from the earth, and though they seem to be alike and even the same, they are in nature and purpose exact opposites, for the one extinguishes fire and the other adds fuel to it. So also the world and its treasures, the heart and its thirst for God are alike His creation. Now the result of the attempt to satisfy the heart with the wealth and pride and honours of this world is the same as if one tried to put out a fire with petrol, for the heart can only find ease and satisfaction in Him who created both it and the longing desire of which it is conscious.

  Sadhu Sundar Singh

  Heart, Pride, Fire

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