Quotes About Consumerism

When computers are sold like toasters, programs will be sold like toothpaste.

I bought some batteries, but they weren't included.

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body." – George Carlin, Author, Actor and Comedian

But I must say that I take my hat off to Sainsbury's, they seem to attract a better class of person. I saw a vicar choosing toilet paper; he chose a four-roll pack of purple three-ply. He must have money to burn! He could have bought some shiny white and given the difference to the poor. What a hypocrite!

They would swear that the United States was their number one enemy, and yet carrying a pack of Marlboro Lights seemed to be a sign of privilege and class.

I think things like 'farm to table' are misleading. I think sometimes that becomes a pedestal or a soap box to get people into your restaurant but is not... it's almost empty in a way. I mean, my food comes from a farm, and I serve it on a table.

In the early 19th century, they tried selling soap as healthy. No one bought it. They tried selling it as sexy, and everyone bought it.

You know what TV is? It's 22 minutes of selling soap.

I was a woman and younger. I started spending a lot of time in the mall doing a lot of qualitative research and really watching what consumers were doing. Were they gravitating towards the sales racks, or were they looking at the new fashions? Were they there to shop, or were they there to socialize?

The most impactful way consumers can assert their power is to become mindful shoppers, giving their dollars only to socially responsible companies. In today's world of social media and smart phones, this is easy to do.

America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.

Shallowness and ignorance have been our lot in the mass consumer societies we inhabit, where we were too distracted to act politically, apart from periodically deputing political elites to take life-and-death decisions on our behalf.

Our societies have achieved a general level of prosperity of which most of all the human beings who have ever lived could only dream. Now we need to show that we can stop continually wanting more - more money, more stuff. We must show that it is possible for people to realise that they have enough.

Could the garment and appliance industries be in cahoots together, creating an artificial sock demand to keep us buying?

I see groups that are hot one minute, and next time you see them, they're asking if you want a soda with that Happy Meal.

I don't like orange soda, but I don't wish Sunkist goes out of business. I just don't drink it.

I really think it is amazing that people actually buy software.

The truth is, a large majority of the market, I'd guess 80 percent, doesn't know anything more than what they are sold.

I buy very little of what's sold to me in the church. Very, very little.

If people know they're being sold to, you can celebrate the sell.

We're living in our neoliberal, sort of late-stage capitalist culture where human beings are really like objects of production and consumption. We're on our screens all the time; we're kind of being sold at all the time.

America is really happy to be sold something.