Quotes About Consumerism

In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.

Barbie's one of those fads whose popularity makes you lose all faith in the human race.

I wish the dollar store sold gas.

Admit it, we all feel cool when we walk around the mall with tons of shopping bags in our arms.

That awkward moment when you see a 10 year old child with a better phone than yours.

Me, too! I'll sell my bras and buy two million! One per cup!

History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.

History will see advertising "as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that."

The commercial edge of so-called progress has cut away a huge region of human tissue and webbing that held us in common with one another.

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.

The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if no other way, we can see the wild an reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index.

When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking.

I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don't need... Stuff settin' out there, you jus' feel like buyin' it whether you need it or not. -Uncle John

Having too many THINGS, he says, [Americans] spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.

Those sons-of-bitches over there ain't buying. Every yard gets 'em. They're lookers. Spend all their time looking. Don't want to buy no cars; take up your time. Don't give a damn for your time.

Funny thing. I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don't need.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

America teaches its children that every passion can be transmuted into an occasion to buy.

In general the churches ... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola: they promoted thirst without quenching it.

Mother is the dead heart of the family spending father's earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps, and watches the television.

Breakthrough Advertising is not about building better mousetraps. It is, however, about building larger mice - and then building a terrifying fear of them in your customers.

Fear is the greatest salesman.

Any change in form produces a fear of change, and that has accelerated. Marketing is the death of invention, because marketing deals with the familiar.