Overconsumption Quotes - Page 2

What can become of him if he is in such bondage to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Joy, Humanity, Desire

Fyodor Dostoevsky (2017). “The Brothers Karamazov (English Russian Edition illustrated): Братья Карамазовы (англо-русская редакция иллюстрированная)”, p.746, Clap Publishing, LLC.

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The people who have more money and goods than any people in the history of the world spend most of their time worrying about not having enough.

Jim Wallis

People, Worry, World

Jim Wallis (1981). “The call to conversion”, Harper San Francisco

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But the meaning of life is not . . . explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account.

Carl Jung

Heart, Desire, Meaning Of Life

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What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must. Who is God, the one and only true? Money is God. Gold and Greenbacks and Stock-father, son, and ghosts of same, three persons in one; These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.

Mark Twain

Father, Son, Men

Mark Twain (1992). “Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays: 1852-1890”

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Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.

Plutarch

Doe, Needs, Pennies

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At a certain fork in the road of automatization, Europeans chose to have more time, and they work far less than we do and get much longer vacations. We chose to have more stuff, the stuff sold to us through those beckoning adjectives-bigger, better, faster: Jet Skis, extra cars, second homes, motor homes, towering slab TVs, if not the time to enjoy them or to enjoy less commodified pleasures.

Rebecca Solnit

Home, Vacation, Car

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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.

Martha Beck

Thinking, Perfect, People

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It is important to recognize that behind the razzmatazz of consumerism, we all remain dependent on basic natural resources - land, air, water and biodiversity - for every product and service. There can be no free lunch on the environment.

Klaus Topfer

Air, Land, Lunch

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What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells?

Mahatma Gandhi

Men, Thieves, Consumerism

Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.76, New Directions Publishing

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As businessmen caught a glimpse of the potentialities inherent in endlessly expanding the wants of people under consumerism, forced draft or otherwise, many began to see blue skies... What was needed was strategies that would make Americans in large numbers into voracious, wasteful, compulsive consumers-and strategies that would provide products assuring such wastefulness. Even where wastefulness was not involved, additional strategies were needed that would induce the public to consume at ever-higher levels.

Vance Packard

Blue, Sky, Numbers

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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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Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.

Matthew Arnold

Class, Wealth, Middle

Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.816, Delphi Classics

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The answers to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. And the answers to the problems of economy are to be found in culture and character. To fail to see this is to go on dividing the world falsely between guilty producers and innocent consumers.

Wendell Berry

Character, Culture, Answers

Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.198, Counterpoint Press

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Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

Pope Francis

Mean, Culture, Leftovers

"Pope Francis: Capitalism is 'a new tyranny'" by Katie Mcdonough, www.salon.com. November 26, 2013.

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Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Running, Men, Thinking

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When I walk into a grocery store and look at all the products you can choose, I say, "My God!" No king ever had anything like I have in my grocery store today.

Bill Gates

Kings, Looks, Today

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Overconsumption is a "cancer eating away at our spiritual vitals." It cuts the heart right out of our compassion. It distances us from the great masses of broken bleeding humanity. It converts us into materialists. We become less able to ask moral questions. For example, just because we have the economic muscle to buy up vast amounts of the world's oil, does that give us the right to do so? 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?

Richard J. Foster

Spiritual, Running, Distance

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Overpopulation is the problem of the third and fourth World; over-consumption is the problem of the West. The average American child this year will consume as much of the world's resources as twenty children born in India. Deliberate and calculated waste is the central aspect of the American economy. We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.

Richard J. Foster

Children, Air, Average

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Human overconsumption is a greater problem than human population growth, and meat eating is a big part of that problem.

Sharon Gannon

Meat Eating, Growth, Population

"Sharon Gannon on Veganism". jivamuktiyoga.com. November 16, 2016.

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To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.

Akhenaton

Inspirational, Happiness, Happy

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He has much who needs least. Do not create necessities for yourself.

Josemaria Escriva

Needs, Consumerism

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Side by side with the miseries of underdevelopment...we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissable. This superdevelopment consists in an excessive availability of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups and makes people slaves of "possession" and immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better. This is the civilization of consumption, or "consumerism," which involves so much throwing away and waste.

Pope John Paul II

Civilization, Availability, People

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Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.

Samuel Johnson

Real, Evil, Wish

Samuel Johnson (1836). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.342

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In the current economic situation, the temptation for the more dynamic economies is that of chasing after advantageous alliances that, nevertheless, can have harmful effects for poorer states, prolonging situations of extreme mass poverty of men and women and using up the earth's natural resources, entrusted to man by God the Creator-as Genesis says-that he might cultivate and protect it.

Pope Benedict XVI

Men, Temptation, Might

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That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.

Robert Neelly Bellah

Philosophy, Acquisition, Television

Robert Neelly Bellah (1975). “The broken covenant: American civil religion in time of trial”, Harper San Francisco

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