Consumerism Quotes

All we do is work to maximise our consumption privileges and to be able to tell people at parties that we’re a lawyer, an artist or a police officer.

~ Robert Wringham

But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those of kind and quantity, the security sought is still the security of numbers, and the chief motive is still the consumer's anxiety that he is missing out on what is in. 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

The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to grow and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all things inherited and free. All things superceded in our progress of innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all.

~ Wendell Berry

Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate 'relationship' involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the 'married' couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.The modern household is the place where the consumptive couple do their consuming. Nothing productive is done there. Such work as is done there is done at the expense of the resident couple or family, and to the profit of suppliers of energy and household technology. For entertainment, the inmates consume television or purchase other consumable diversion elsewhere.There are, however, still some married couples who understand themselves as belonging to their marriage, to each other, and to their children. What they have they have in common, and so, to them, helping each other does not seem merely to damage their ability to compete against each other. To them, 'mine' is not so powerful or necessary a pronoun as 'ours.'This sort of marriage usually has at its heart a household that is to some extent productive. The couple, that is, makes around itself a household economy that involves the work of both wife and husband, that gives them a measure of economic independence and self-employment, a measure of freedom, as well as a common ground and a common satisfaction. (From Feminism, the Body, and the Machine)

~ Wendell Berry

The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it—just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her.

~ Alain De Botton

If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.

~ Vicki Robin

We no longer live life. We consume it.

~ Vicki Robin

Americans used to be 'citizens.' Now we are 'consumers.

~ Vicki Robin

Don't get too lost in consumerism or materialism. As for ownership, the ultimate test of it is were you born with it and can you take it with you when you leave?

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Now, sorcery rules the world. Of course, most don't call it sorcery; indeed, many would be horrified by such a notion. Instead, they use words like ideology, politics, defence, security, patriotism, commerce, industry, marketing, consumerism and belief. But where there is power-seeking, especially power over others or for oneself, though also over oneself, and be it wittingly or unwittingly conjured up, make no mistake: there is sorcery afoot. It just comes in different shades and colours, that's all.

~ H.m. Forester

With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but at home. A curious condition of a republic based roughly onthe original Roman model is that it cannot allow true political parties to share in government. What then is a true political party: one that is based firmly in the interest of a class be it workers or fox hunters. Officially we have two parties which are in fact wings of a common party of property with two right wings. Corporate wealth finances each. Since the property party controls every aspect of media they have had decades to create a false reality for a citizenry largely uneducated by public schools that teach conformity with an occasional advanced degree in consumerism.

~ Gore Vidal

Today we live in a society that seems to be less and less concerned with reality. We drink instant coffee and reconstituted orange juice. We buy our vegetables on cardboard trays covered with plastic. But perhaps the most dehumanizing thing of all is that we have allowed the media to call us consumers--ugly. No! I don't want to be a consumer. Anger consumes. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Live from abundance,Utilize with economy,Share in advance.

~ Geoffrey M. Gluckman

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

~ Samuel Johnson

The child tends to be stripped of all social influences but those of the market place, all sense of place, function and class is weakened, the characteristics of region and clan, neighborhood or kindred are attenuated. The individual is denuded of everything but appetities, 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. A culture becomes the main determinant upon morality, beliefs and purposes, usurping more and more territory that formerly belonged to parents, teachers, community, priests and politics alike.

~ Jeremy Seabrook

This is the typical fallacy on which all of CONSUMER AMERICA is based. Some piece of useless crap will make people like you.

~ Blake Nelson

These days only a guerrilla or a box man would want to cover up his identity to the extent of refusing the convenience of instalment buying. But I am that box man. A representative of anti-instalmentism.

~ Kōbō Abe

Our identity is affected less and less by what we produce and more and more by what we consume.

~ Pete Sanders

We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.

~ Erich Fromm

As universities have turned into businesses, so students have turned into consumers.

~ Kenan Malik

We believe we are the consumers, but we are the consumed.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies, it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.

~ Susan Sontag

Psychotherapy and counselling should make people aware of themselves and of the difficulties which they face. This then gives them the freedom to choose for themselves. In this sense, unlike behaviour therapy, psychotherapy is value-free: no advice, suggestions or recriminations are given. Indeed the only value of psychotherapy is respect for the individual. Such respect, however, in a mechanistic and objectifying society ... becomes a political act.

~ Paul Kline

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.

~ Steven Pressfield

The more people have time to experience the joys of creativity, the less they will be consumers, especially of mass-produced culture. I see that as a kind of new wealth that counts for more than owning material things. I also see art as something people will do rather than consume, and do it as a natural part of their lives; creative endeavors are a form of profound spiritual satisfaction.

~ Theodore Roszak

We are not consumers. For most of humanity’s existence, we were makers, not consumers: we made our clothes, shelter, and education, we hunted and gathered our food.We are not addicts. “I propose that most addictions come from our surrendering our real powers, that is, our powers of creativity.” We are not passive couch potatoes either. “It is not the essence of humans to be passive. We are players. We are actors on many stages…. We are curious, we are yearning to wonder, we are longing to be amazed… to be excited, to be enthusiastic, to be expressive. In short to be alive.” We are also not cogs in a machine. To be so would be to give up our personal freedoms so as to not upset The Machine, whatever that machine is. Creativity keeps us creating the life we wish to live and advancing humanity’s purpose as well.

~ Matthew Fox

Because our needs are our little daily dreams The little things to be done that project us into tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the future; trivial things that we plan to buy next week, allowing us to think that next week we'll still be alive.

~ Grégoire Delacourt

Everything was fine, would continue to be fine, would eventually get even better as long as the supermarket did not slip.

~ Don Delillo

I have every luxury imaginable, I own acres of land, and have enough money to buy the moon were it for sale. Though people think I have everything, it sometimes feels like my possessions own me; towering over me and reducing me into a small bundle of insignificance.

~ J. Matthew Nespoli

Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.

~ Wendell Berry

Ownership breeds slavery: with every single thing that you acquire, comes a new worry of not losing that thing.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

By using repetition, images, and other strategies - all of which communicate truths in ways that are not cognitively or propositional - marketing forms us into the kind of persons who want to buy beer to have meaningful relationships, or to buy a car to be respected, or buy the latest thing to come along simply to satisfy the desire that has been formed and implanted in us. It is important to appreciate that these disciplinary mechanisms transmit values and truth claims, but not via propositions or cognitive means; rather, the values are transmitted more covertly...This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.

~ James K.a. Smith

To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, and not love things and use people.

~ John Powell

The vain man buys to impress, but the REAL man buys to fulfil a need.

~ Auliq Ice

Whoever that came up with the idea of people having to have 'a dream' sure knew how to keep these creatures called human beings preoccupied.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

This is the postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products

~ Larry Mccaffrey

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like'. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.

~ Richard J. Foster

How is it that when we see politics permeate every life sector we call it totalitarianism and when we see religion everywhere we call it theocracy, but when commerce dominates everything we call it liberty?

~ Benjamin Barber

...those thoroughly incorporated within the inexorable logic of the market and its demands find that there is little time and space in which to explore emancipatory potentialities outside what is marketed as 'creative' adventure, leisure, and spectacle. Obliged to live as appendages of the market and of capital accumulation rather than as expressive beings, the realm of freedom shrinks before the awful logic and the hollow intensity of market involvements

~ David Harvey