Quotes About Consumption

Oh, I'd say I like a meal as much as anybody. But I find a certain kind of foodiness silly, gluttonous and embarrassing.

I'm a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they're simpler for customers.

If we were starting from scratch, there's no question a simple retail consumption tax with protections for those with lower incomes would drive the economy the best and be the simplest to administer.

It is very possible to have lives that are just as prosperous, and nicer, that use 5 percent of the fossil fuels and virgin materials we do now. But if we're living anything like the average McMansion-ite, SUV-driving suburbanites, there's simply no way that can be powered in a climate-friendly way.

Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.

Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.

Capitalism has to transform plenitude into scarcity, because it cannot endure its own abundance.

This leads to a veritable Kantian Antinomy of the aesthetic under late capitalism. Aesthetics must be simultaneously promoted beyond all measure, and yet reduced to nothing.

corn sweetener is to the republic of fat what corn whiskey was to the alcoholic republic.

In 1820, the average amount an individual drank in one day was more than three times the average today.119

When consuming goods rather than satisfying work becomes the focus of our culture, we have created (or acquieced in) a society of permanent adolescents.

Pop art: only possible in an affluent society, where one can be free to enjoy ironic consumption.

La necesidad de confirmar la realidad y dilatar la experiencia mediante fotografías es un consumismo estético al que hoy todos son adictos. Las sociedades industriales transforman a sus ciudadanos en yonquis a las imágenes; es la forma más irresistible de contaminación mental.

A necessidade de comprovar a realidade e de engrandecer a experiência através das fotografias é uma forma de consumismo estético a que todos nos entregamos. As sociedades industriais transformam os seus cidadãos em viciados de imagens; trata-se da mais irresistível forma de poluição mental

As the old advertising slogan of Paris Match, founded in 1949, had it: "The weight of words, the shock of photos." The hunt for more dramatic (as they're often described) images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value.

A fawn eats the equivalent of its body weight every twenty-four hours." "How do you know that?" "Read it in a book. I read sixty books last year." "Geez," he said. "Why?" "'Cause there wasn't time to read more," she said with a superior sniff. "Hard

she read books the way an addict swallowed pills. She devoured stories one after the other, trying not to let reality intrude too deeply.

Oh, the world appears to work smoothly enough, like a toy town where the only business is the constant shifting of goods and wastes. If that were all, how easy to live - buy your food, put out the garbage. But the toys and models and dolls and the world's looks are treacherous. They teach children it will be easy. The real problem of consumption and disposal are nothing like what children are led to suspect.

There are far too many people born into the world, and far too many words written. Millions and millions of them pouring from the presses every minute. It's a horrible thought.

The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide.

I can't figure out where you put all that," Tucker observed. "You eat like a horse." "It goes straight to my cock

The large factory became an incandescent symbol of human ambition and achievement, but also of suffering. Time and again, it served as a measuring rod for attitudes toward work, consumption, and power, a physical embodiment of dreams and nightmares about the future.

Once again it occurred to me that so many of the things I could do in New York involved eating and drinking. Had we been placed here on earth to do nothing more than eat and drink?

They don't use the word used anymore. With cars it's preowned. With books, preread. With clothes what would you say, preoccupied?