Overconsumption Quotes - Page 7

• 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

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• 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

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• A vital difference between the professional man and a man of business is that money making to the professional man should, by virtue of his assumption, be incidental; to the businessman it is primary. Money has its limitations; while it may buy quantity, there is something beyond it and that is quality.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Men, Differences, Quality

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• Advertisers regularly con us into believing that we genuinely need one luxury after another. We are convinced that we must keep up with or even go one better than our neighbors. So we buy another dress, sports jacket or sports car and thereby force up the standard of living. The ever more affluent standard of living is the god of twentieth century North America and the adman is its prophet.

  Ronald J. Sider

  Sports, Believe, Luxury

  Ronald J. Sider (1977). “Rich Christians in an age of hunger: a Biblical study”, IVP Books

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• Advertising signs: they con you into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on all around you

  Bob Dylan

  Winning, Thinking, Done

  Bob Dylan (2014). “The Lyrics: Since 1962”, p.188, Simon and Schuster

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• All of us experience the sad effects of blind submission to consumerism. In the first place it represents crass materialism. At the same time it represents a radical dissatisfaction because one quickly learns that the more one possesses, the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled.

  Pope John Paul II

  Want, Firsts, Materialism

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• But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property comes another institution-that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then.

  William Ralph Inge

  Powerful, Men, Average

  William Ralph Inge (1920). “Outspoken Essays”

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• Consume more than you need This is the dream Make you pauper Or make you queen I won't die lonely I'll have it all prearranged A grave that's deep and wide enough For me and all my mountains o'things

  Tracy Chapman

  Dream, Lonely, Queens

  Song: Mountains o' Things, Album: Tracy Chapman, 1988

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• Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that create the wants.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Want, Bizarre, Made

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2001). “The Essential Galbraith”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace.

  Thomas Merton

  Doe, Sake, Way

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• Day by day night after night Blinded by the neon lights Hurry here, hustlin' there No one's got the time to spare Money's tight, nothin' free Won't somebody come and rescue me? I am stranded, caught in the crossfire Stranded, caught in the crossfire! Tooth for tooth, eye for an eye Sell your soul just to buy, buy, buy Beggin' a dollar stealin' a dime Come on can't you see that I I am stranded, caught in the crossfire

  Stevie Ray Vaughan

  Eye, Night, Light

  Song: Crossfire

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• In a consumer society, expectations dare not plateau, because a growing economy depends on rising expectations... The more we let our level of contentment be determined by outside factors-a new car, fashionable clothes, a prestigious career, social status-the more we relinquish control over our own happiness.

  Paul Brand

  Careers, Clothes, Expectations

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• Roughly two billion people participate in the money economy, with less than half of those living in the wealthy countries of the developed world. These affluent 800 million, however, account for more than 75 percent of the world's energy and resource consumption, and also create the bulk of its industrial, toxic, and consumer waste.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Country, Two, People

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• I want a change, and a radical change. I want a change from an acquisitive society to a functional society, from a society of go-getters to a society of go-givers.

  Peter Maurin

  Want, Radical Change, Giver

  Peter Maurin (2010). “Easy Essays”, p.63, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• The money economy thus leaves a large ecological footprint, defined as the amount of land and resources required to meet a typical consumer's needs. For example, with only about 4% of the world's population, the United States, the largest money economy, consumes in excess of one-quarter of the world's energy and materials and generates in excess of 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Land, Energy, Typical

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• I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

  Paul the Apostle

  Giving, Secret, Needs

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• I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies.

  Ivan Illich

  Believe, Independent, Technology

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• I saw that a humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might live on a little; and that where the heart is set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving, but that commonly with an increase of wealth, the desire of wealth increased.

  John Woolman

  Heart, Humble, Blessing

  John Woolman (2013). “journal”, p.35, Lulu.com

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• If the Christ we follow sent out his disciples with no extra possessions (Luke 9:1-6 and 10:1-12) and warned would-be devotees that he had nowhere to lay his head (see Luke 9:57-62), then we must recognize that it is extremely difficult to live in a Christian way in a consumer culture.

  Marva Dawn

  Christian, Would Be, Culture

  Marva J. Dawn (1999). “A Royal Waste of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World”, p.88, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• New pressures are causing ever more people to find their main satisfaction in their consumptive role rather than in their productive role. And these pressures are bringing forward such traits as pleasure-mindedness, self-indulgence, materialism, and passivity as conspicuous elements of the American character.

  Vance Packard

  Character, Self, People

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• There are not enough rich and powerful people to consume the whole world; for that, the rich and powerful need the help of countless ordinary people.

  Wendell Berry

  Powerful, People, Ordinary

  Wendell Berry (1993). “Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays”, Pantheon

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• There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of new possessions they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Sight, Self

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• Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find-nothing.

  Aesop

  Thinking, Giving, Gold

  Aesop (2013). “Aesop's Fables”, p.58, Lulu Press, Inc

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• This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all three ideas are untrue. Possessions only provide temporary happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions.

  Rick Warren

  Ideas, Bored, Important

  Rick Warren (2012). “The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?”, p.27, Zondervan

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• Let us be bold enough to ask ourselves as Christians whether the Church of the Lord Jesus in the United States has anything to say to our nation and its ideologies of materialism, possessiveness, and the worship of financial security. Are we courageous enough to be a sign of contradiction to consumerism through our living faith in Jesus Christ? Are we committed enough to his gospel to become a countercurrent to the drift?

  Brennan Manning

  Christian, Jesus, Church

  Brennan Manning (2011). “The Signature of Jesus”, p.73, Multnomah

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