Consumerism Quotes

• Advertising tries to stimulate our sensuous desires, converting luxuries into necessities, but it only intensifies man's inner misery. The business world is bent on creating hungers which its wares never satisfy, and thus it adds to the frustrations and broken minds of our times.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Frustration, Men, Luxury

  68 Copy quote

• In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

  Ivan Illich

  Two, Envy, Addiction

  Tools for Conviviality ch. 3 (1973)

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.

  Will Rogers

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

  165 Copy quote

• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Nature

  149 Copy quote

• We no longer live life. We consume it.

  Vicki Robin

  Live Life

  Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez, Monique Tilford (2008). “Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Ind ependence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century”, p.41, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.

  Elise M. Boulding

  Happiness, Lying, Simple

  61 Copy quote

• What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.

  Jeff Bezos

  People, Worst

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

  Noam Chomsky

  Inspirational, Media, People

  25 Copy quote
• 

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

  Vernon Howard

  Life, Happiness, Success

  107 Copy quote

• We live in an era of consumerism and it's all about desire-based consumerism and it has nothing to do with things we actually need.

  Aloe Blacc

  Desire, Needs, Eras

  "Aloe Blacc Discusses His Grand Scheme to Get Some Dollars". Interview with Brandon Deroche, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 15, 2011.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Long, Hatred

  Noam Chomsky (2016). “Who Rules the World?”, p.54, Metropolitan Books

  465 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Kin Hubbard

  Literature, Hardest, Hardest Thing

  54 Copy quote

• Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Determine, Overconsumption, True Worth

  18 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Thinking, Waste, Obstacles

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.201, Counterpoint

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Consumerism has led us to become used to an excess and daily waste of food, to which, at times, we are no longer able to give a just value, which goes well beyond mere economic parameters. We should all remember, however, that throwing food away is like stealing from the tables of the the poor, the hungry!

  Pope Francis

  Food, Giving, Excess

  3 Copy quote

• The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.

  William Ralph Inge

  Happiness, People, Bored

  8 Copy quote

• Consumerism is our national religion.

  Jennifer Stone

  Jennifer Stone (1988). “Mind Over Media: Essays on Film and Television”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

  John Ruskin

  Workout, Simplicity, Possession

  The Eagle's Nest ch. 5 (1872)

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not let your "eye" be drawn by the false "beacon lamps" -of wealth, or position, or fame, or possessions. Be vigilant over your will and desires, for these are the corrupt forces that dwell within, and keep you from living free.

  John of the Cross

  Eye, Over You, Desire

  69 Copy quote

• There must be more to life than having everything.

  Maurice Sendak

  Life, Environmental, Materialism

  Maurice Sendak, William Knowlton Zinsser (1998). “Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra...

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Names, Guy, Poverty

  "Fight Club". www.imdb.com. 1999.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

  Edward Abbey

  Inspirational, Nature, Cancer

  Quoted in Reader's Digest, Jan. 1970

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• You, O money, are the cause of a restless life! Because of you we journey toward a premature death; you provide cruel nourishment for the evils of men; the seed of our cares sprouts from your head.

  Propertius

  Money, Journey, Men

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Berry

  Meaningful, Thinking, Ideas

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.85, Counterpoint

  141 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.

  Christopher Lasch

  Loyalty, Different, Logic

  17 Copy quote