Quotes About Consumerism

There is hardly anything in the world that some man can't make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.

People will buy anything that's one to a customer.

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.

We don't need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.

So many of us define ourselves by what we have, what we wear, what kind of house we live in, and what kind of car we drive ... if you think of yourself as the woman in the Cartier watch and the Hermes scarf, a house fire will destroy not only your possessions but your self.

Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle and always want more and more.

I still think what the consumers are looking for is, number one, entertainment. They want to be entertained. It can be a liberal, a libertarian, or a conservative. It can be far-left or far-right. If they are entertained, they are going to tune in.

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks, there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.

Holiday binge-buying has deep roots in American culture: department stores have been associating turkey gluttony with its spending equivalent since they began sponsoring Thanksgiving Day parades in the early 20th century.

I've been to McDonald's in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Scotland, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada and Singapore. Despite that, I'm still without a fast food endorsement, which hurts a bit because you're not really somebody unless someone is paying for your McDonald's.

Middle-class mothers and fathers turned out to be a very well-defined consumer group, easily gulled into buying almost anything that might remedy their parental deficiencies.

America, you're sending girls a mixed message. On one hand, you're saying to have positive body image and love who we are; on the other, we're being marketed makeup and clothing that obviously turns us into someone different.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

Shopping turns me off.

Even one's own home is a kind of anthology of advertisers, manufacturers, motifs and presentation techniques. There's nothing 'natural' about one's home these days. The furnishings, the fabrics, the furniture, the appliances, the TV, and all the electronic equipment - we're living inside commercials.

I got a Cadillac Escalade. Put some rims on it, threw a couple TV's in there, and installed a system. I stuck my Xbox in there. I had to go for it.

I remember when I realised, as a child, 'That stuff on the TV about nuclear bombs is real! Why isn't everyone running around shouting 'Aaarrgghh'? Why are people still buying bicycle clips?'

I think a lot of self-identity and inner-personal development is hampered by consumerism and capitalism because we see ourselves as a reflection of the TV, rather than as a reflection of the people who are around us, truly.

Ninety percent of what I'm listening to overall is like the same tape of Bob Marley's Greatest Hits. Like, how did I become one of those people on late night TV where they sell anthologies to you and you buy them?

We start caring way too much about that new TV show or how many likes we're getting on Facebook or what our mother will think of our new house plant. These are bad values that turn us into frivolous people.

The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.

I do remember the moment when, as a child, I realized that the things we call 'TV shows' are really just the stuff that gets put between commercials. Later, I came to see that the kinds of things that get on 'free' TV are shows that help sell products.

Tweeting about objects means I don't need to bid on them, which is a blessing. Buying something is a way of saying, 'Look at this!' So is tweeting. So, I guess, is writing fiction.

I've got over three-hundred pairs of shoes back home - I'm twenty-four years old and I wear a size four, so all my shoes are just cheap.