Quotes About Consumption

The United States has long thought of itself as the land of infinite plenty, and historically we did have abundant resources. But now we are gradually exhausting our fisheries, our topsoil, our water. On top of that, we're coming to the end of world resources.

I think that the Japanese - and I do love Japanese cuisine and adore Japanese food culture - I think that they're going to plow through the entire world's fishing. They're going to eat everything anyways.

Reading is so private, and it is often a reader's habit to finish a book, close the covers, and plunge into the next one without a backward glance.

I have very, very low expenditures, but still I manage to spend it all. I guess Hot Pockets are more expensive than I thought.

One of the best ways to grow this economy is to put money in people's pockets.

Recreational shopping is the shortest distance between two points: you and broke.

I'd rather buy clothes than buy a bed.

On Common Culture, you'll find coffee, clothing, and compilations. So many C's!

The Russians are not as addicted to coffee as the Americans. We should work on that!

The day people stop watching sex comedies, makers will stop making them.

I have a very commercial appetite. I don't like to do high-brow things.

I have an eccentric view on commodities not necessarily shared by my colleagues - or by almost anybody. And that is, we're running out of everything.

Everything does not have to be a commodity.

I've eaten things that didn't complain this much.

It sounds weird when you complain about having to eat so much, but it's like a job.

I mean, I love buying albums, I'm obsessed, but now you just click 'add', don't you? And when do you actually listen to anything? You know, unless you're in the car or you've got time to do that, it's just not the same world any more in terms of concentration.

I personally believe that the iPod is a frankly corrosive device because it encourages you to surround yourself with your favorites. The whole idea of a playlist is to surround yourself with your favorite things, and the interesting thing is that when you do that, they cease to be your favorites.

I don't think capitalism can survive.

Supermarkets don't really sustain a community, and they completely remove people from the food chain.

In several quarters in the 2000s, if you added up all the private savings of everyone in the United States, it was less than nothing. You can't sustain that as a driver of growth.

This is the game of those who deny climate change or who deny the need for sustainability. They say, 'They are going to take everything away from us. They are going to take our cars away from us. They are going to take our steaks from us. They are going to take all the things that make life nice away from us. So let's not go there.'

It is important what you eat now, what you do now. If we were interested in a sustainable planet where other generations have a right to a decent future, we would not live like this.

I was writing a book about sustainable energy, and a friend asked me, 'Well, how much energy do you use at home?' And I was embarrassed. I didn't actually know.

Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.