Quotes About Consumerism

The civilized want people to make their living individually, and they want them to live separately, behind locked doors—one family to a house, each house fully stocked with refrigerators, television sets, washing machines, and so on.

What I find sad is that the New Age movement is primarily a commercial undertaking. But it is answering to a human need.

So much of our culture is bought and manufactured - not to say great art can't come out of that. Some art is really amazing that is manufactured and sold, like action movies and stuff.

The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into your mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so.

Scared for health, afraid of death, bored, dissatisfied, vengeful, greedy, ignorant, and gullible—these are the qualities of the ideal consumer. Can we imagine a way of education that would turn passive consumers into active and informed critics, capable of using their own minds in their own defense?

The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution.

Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.

A number of people, by now, have told me that I could greatly improve things by buying a computer. My answer is that I am not going to do it. I have several reasons, and they are good ones.

El dinero no vale nada; lo que te compras sí.

That's what money will buy you, in America," Brown had said, firmly. "People say Americans are materialistic. But do you know why?" "Why?" asked Milgrim, more concerned with this uncharacteristically expansive mode of expression on Brown's part. "Because they have better stuff," Brown had replied. "No other reason.

the windows of army surplus stores constituted hymns to male powerlessness.

I have often raised an eyebrow at hearing him sing, as I push a cart down some Safeway aisle, of the spiritual complexities induced by he admixture of Cuervo Gold, cocaine, and nineteen-year-old girls (in the hands of a man of, shall we say, a certain age). At which point I look around Frozen Foods and wonder: Is anyone else hearing this?

People say Americans are materialistic. But do you know why?" "Why?" asked Milgrim, more concerned with this uncharacteristically expansive mode of expression on Brown's part. "Because they have better stuff," Brown had replied. "No other reason.

No," Tessa said, "you've got it exactly backwards. People don't know what they want, not before they see it. Every object of desire is a found object. Traditionally, anyway." Chevette

Far more creativity, today, goes into marketing of products than into the products themselves

I didn't come out here to be abused by vintage product from the Hefty toy department.

the mall crowds swaying like wind-blown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification

She rolls over, abandoning this pointless parody of sleep. Gropes for her clothes. A small boy's black Fruit Of The Loom T-shirt, thoroughly shrunken, a thin gray V-necked pullover purchased by the half-dozen from a supplier to New England prep schools, and a new and oversized pair of black 501's, every trademark carefully removed. Even the buttons on these have been ground flat, featureless, by a puzzled Korean locksmith, in the Village, a week ago.

In a world where everything is hyped and hawked, where every available space, even the risers of subway steps, is claimed for advertising, Brando's admonitions against the monetization of the culture, voiced frequently from the 1960s on, feel extremely prescient.

One of his friends, a marketing professor at Stanford, said, "Think about this from a marketing perspective. We can change behavior in a short television ad. We don't do it with information. We do it with identity: 'If I buy a BMW, I'm going to be this kind of person.

The value of the new A&W burger depended on consumers comparing two fractions: 1/3 and 1/4. But fractions are difficult for everyone, because they're parts of things as opposed to whole objects. We like to count things, and fractions don't equal "things." So, we jump to the closest available whole numbers. 4 is bigger than 3, so we mistakenly infer that a 1/4-pounder is a bigger burger than a 1/3-pounder.

The company wants to sell you more shampoo, your friend doesn't, so she gets more trust points.

Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.

Stroll on. When the going gets tough, the postmodern analyst goes shopping.