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.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.

  Bono

  Brother, Distance, Unity

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• American culture is no longer created by the people... A free, authentic life is no longer possible in AmericaTM today. We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence. Most North Americans now live designer lives-sleep, eat, sit in car, work, shop, watch TV, sleep again. I doubt there's more than a handful of free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We ourselves have been branded.

  Kalle Lasn

  Sleep, Media, Car

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  91 Copy quote

• We are a material-mad race of people. Build, increase, expand, pile up, hoard! More and more and more. "If we can just make enough money to-to- !" Jesus said: "Sell what ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth."

  Eugenia Price

  Jesus, Race, People

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are developing new types of destitutes-the automobileless, the yachtless, the Newportcottageless. The subtlest luxuries of today reaches very high in the social scale... The end of it all is vexation of spirit.

  Walter Weyl

  Luxury, Today, Vexation

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  13 Copy quote