Consumerism Quotes - Page 12

• Our society is falling back increasingly on rampant consumerism and self-promoting social media as a way for people to feel that their lives matter - self-centered means of numbing the questions of mattering. Culture has relapsed back into the self-aggrandizing, glorifying answers that the Athenians had presumed, which had Socrates railing against them until he got so annoying that they killed him.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Fall, Mean, Self

  "Interview With Rebecca Goldstein on Plato at the Googleplex, Philosophy for the Public, and Everything". Interview with Ophelia Benson, www.butterfliesandwheels.org. March 20, 2014.

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• The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Men, Technology

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

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• To the extent that we consume, in our present circumstances, we are guilty. To the extent that we guilty consumers are conservationists, we are absurd. But what can we do? Must we go on writing letters to politicians and donating to conservation organizations until the majority of our fellow citizens agree with us? Or can we do something directly to solve our share of the problem? I am a conservationist. I believe wholeheartedly in putting pressure on the politicians and in maintaining the conservation organizations.

  Wendell Berry

  Believe, Writing, Organization

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• 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.

  Fidel Castro

  Years, Shoes, Ideas

  Fidel Castro (2002). “War, Racism and Economic Injustice: The Global Ravages of Capitalism”, Ocean Press (AU)

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• So excited for the Apple Watch. For centuries, we've checked the time by looking at our phones. Having it on your wrist? Genius.

  Ellen DeGeneres

  Technology, Reality, Phones

  Ellen DeGeneres‏ @TheEllenShow, twitter.com. September 9, 2014.

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• we were raising our standard of living at the expense of our standard of character.

  Ida Tarbell

  Character, Standards, Expenses

  Ida M. Tarbell (2015). “All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography”, p.318, Ravenio 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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• Just when you thought multi-nationals and crazed consumerism were too big to fight, along comes Naomi Klein with facts, spirit, and news of successful fighters already out there. No Logo is an invigorating call to arms for everybody who wants to save money, justice, or the universe.

  Gloria Steinem

  Fighting, Successful, Justice

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• 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"?

  Joy Davidman

  Dream, Twists, Want

  Joy Davidman (1985). “Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments”, p.119, Westminster John Knox Press

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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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• I think consumerism breeds dissatisfaction, and I think that the advertisers play to that. So I cannot be comfortable with that. On the other hand, the cornucopia of products and innovation - I love Apple, for example. That's a temple of consumerism in many ways.

  John Elkington

  Thinking, Hands, Play

  "Q&A: John Elkington". Interview with Jessie Finfrock, www.motherjones.com. November 2008.

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• 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?

  Bill McKibben

  Offering, Order, Television

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• I believe that conventional marketing techniques are increasingly ineffective. Customers are hyped out. They have been overmarketed. They are becoming more cynical about the whole advertising and marketing process.

  Anita Roddick

  Believe, Cynical, Marketing

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• 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.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Knights, Together, Events

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• One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

  Susan Sontag

  Selfishness, Want, Messages

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• The consumer today is the victim of the manufacturer who launches on him a regiment of products for which he must make room in his soul.

  Mary McCarthy

  Soul, Today, Rooms

  Mary McCarthy (1964). “The Humanist in the Bathtub”

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• We must act now and wake up to our moral obligations. The poor and vulnerable are members of God's family and are the most severely affected by droughts, high temperatures, the flooding of coastal cities, and more severe and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change. We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources.

  Desmond Tutu

  Home, Should Have, Cities

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• Small wastebasket liners, $1.17 ... tall wastebasket liners, $2.29 ... garbage can liners, $3.98 ... I think I just spent $7.44 buying something I'm going to throw away.

  Cathy Guisewite

  Thinking, Garbage Cans, Buying Something

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• in the comparatively short time between my childhood and my daughter's, the business society has ceased urging people to produce and is now exerting its very considerable influence to get them to consume.

  Margaret Halsey

  Daughter, People, Childhood

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• Everything is about consumerism. If there's money to be made, there will be an audience and people will feel empowered and I truly believe that women haven't fully tapped into their potential as a market.

  Rashida Jones

  Believe, People, Made

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

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• The next time you go shopping, demand more change.

  Anita Roddick

  Shopping, Demand, Next

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• One of the problems with industrialism is that it's based on the premise of more and more. It has to keep expanding to keep going. More and more television sets. More and more cars. More and more steel, and more and more pollution. We don't question whether we need any more or what we'll do with them. We just have to keep on making more and more if we are to keep going. Sooner or later it's going to collapse. ... Look what we have done already with the principle of more and more when it comes to nuclear weapons.

  Dora Russell

  Car, Principles, Needs

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• Advertising prods people into wanting more and better things. Of course advertising makes people dissatisfied with what they have - makes them raise their sights. Mighty good thing it does. Nothing could be worse for the United States than 200,000,000 satisfied Americans.

  Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

  Sight, People, Wanting More

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• '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.

  Patrick Stump

  Song, Fall, Boys

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• 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.

  Stephanie Mills

  Opposites, Advertising, Banality

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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