Quotes About Consumption

It's strange to learn that in Livermore, California, one of the first light bulbs ever manufactured remains lit, over a hundred years after it was first switched on. In the earliest example of planned obsolescence, it took a group decision by light-bulb manufacturers in the 1950s to specifically limit the life of all subsequently made bulbs to a few years, in order to ensure that people would have to come back and buy more.

Even if through simple living and rigorous recycling you stopped your own average Americans annual one ton of garbage production, your per capita share of the industrial waste produced in the US is still almost twenty-six tons. That's thirty-seven times as much waste as you were able to save by eliminating a full 100 percent of your personal waste. Industrialism itself is what has to stop.

Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organised political resistance

When people tell me population is the number one environmental problem we face today, I always respond that population is by no means primary. It's not even secondary or tertiary. First, there's the question of resource consumption […]. Second is the failure to accept limits, of which overpopulation and overconsumption are merely two linked symptoms.

Within this culture wealth is measured by one's ability to consume and destroy.

It is impossible for individuals to examine the huge number of new books that are being published every day

Violence Without violence, there is no nourishment. Unless the mineral is consumed, the plant cannot grow. Unless the plant is consumed, the animal cannot grow. Physical growth demands the consumption of another. Only mental growth is possible without consuming another; but it is a choice humans rarely make.

You can tell how high a society is by how much of its garbage is recycled.

The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother's lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That is the way Sirine suspects that Arabs feel everything - larger than life, feelings walking in the sky.

When I get a little money I buy books," he confessed to a friend. "If any is left, I buy food and clothes."13

When fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple, the children surf the internet all day in dark corners of the room and are bombarded with latest gadgets. Things replace parental standards.

There would certainly be wide agreement that more than 4 billion of the world's 7 billion people are very far from having enough. At least 2 billion do not have enough to eat, do not have adequate housing and water, are unable to educate their children or afford health care. These "bottom of the pyramid" billions can hardly be considered greedy when they aspire to be consumers and buy the global brands that signal joining the modern economic world.

For us, books have turned into fast food, to be consumed in the gaps between one bout of relentless living and the next. Airports, subways, maybe half an hour at bedtime, maybe something with the office sandwich, isn't really ideal.

If I, the boiling water, And you, the tea; Then your fragrance Has to depend solely upon my plainness.... I have to be hot, even boiled Before we consume each other....

Her youthful habit of consuming a picture just inches from its aromatic surface died a long time ago. Sebastian, when they were first dating, had once called it an affectation and she could never bring herself to do it again. His offhanded comment should have been a sign of future cruelties and standards of perfection, but instead she'd quickly agreed with his assessment and was grateful for his candor. She

In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

However, the major issue is not how many of these books are purchased but how many get used. Our Debased Head Honcho would prefer that many of them be acquired then set on a shelf to gather dust. That's better than having only a few purchased but each of them carefully studied and the implemented.

However, the major issue is not how many of these books are purchased but how many get used. Our Debased Head Honcho would prefer that many of them be acquired then set on a shelf to gather dust. That's better than having only a few purchased but each of them carefully studied and then implemented.

The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of the soda can, which when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years." --Guido Sarducci

Crockery has been withdrawn from American culture below a certain level.

Just across the bridge is the gigantic marketplace, the insatiable consumer machine that drives the violence here. North Americans smoke the dope, snort the coke, shoot the heroin, do the meth, and then have the nerve to point south (down, of course, on the map), and wag their fingers at the "Mexican drug problem" and Mexican corruption.

The way to healthy living is to shift from quantitative economic growth to quality of life, food, water and air - to shift from craving to contentment and from greed to gratitude

There are other ways of finding satisfaction, recipes for human happiness, enjoyment, dignified and meaningful, gratifying life, than increased consumption that increases production.

The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.