Quotes About Consumerism

I am an American aquarium drinker

That tablecloth created by forced labor looks amazing on that table manufactured with formaldehyde in a sweatshop.

Train them to pay attention to their choices. (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle are good ideas, he would lecture, but those three concepts should only be the last resort. What you really need to focus on are two other words that also begin with R- Reconsider and Refuse. Before you even acquire the disposable good, ask yourself why you need this consumer product. And then turn it down. Refuse it. You can.)

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.

As it is, the profusion of commodities is a genuine and powerful compensation for oppression.

Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

It's quite like the songwriter actually couldn't be bothered to think of words...It will be precisely why the song sold so many copies and was such a big deal at the time. People like things not to be too meaningful.

Christmas is probably too bourgeois.

Working title? Paddy says. <...> Same as the novel, he says. To persuade people it's an adaptation of something a lot of people bought so it must be good.

I ultimately bought two of the five items—the high-top sneakers and the leather jacket—and for days after the purchase, I was in turmoil. Not just because I'd still spent over a thousand dollars, an insane amount, in my view. But also because I should've gotten that belt.

Modern man threw a brick through his own window in order to sell himself a burglar alarm.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

Number of empty Ben & Jerry's containers: 3 -- two mint chocolate cookie, one plain vanilla. (Who buys plain vanilla ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, anyway? Is there a greater waste?)

A man who works hard and uses his wealth to purchase jewelry to adorn himself, suits tailored in London, shoes handmade in Rome, and a hundred-thousand-dollar sportscar, which he drives cautiously and keeps in meticulous repair, will be viewed by everybody as a poor fool with a lot of pathetic needs.

He is a great simpleton who imagines that the chief power of wealth is to supply wants. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it creates more wants than it supplies.

Our children lost our direction because they have been compromised. They have found freedom at the ballot box, and then they have taken on plastic chains around their minds and souls and mortgage their future on credit cards. They have to learn better - they have to learn the value of ideas and health as opposed to wealth.

I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.

Our culture is hung up on and overemphasises what can be derived from material objects. I think this is something quite new, over the past 200 or 300 years - that life has become about accumulating material wealth. The 21st century is not about accumulating material wealth like the 20th century. It's already eroding.

We spend our way to the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.

The American dream is a crock. Stop wanting everything. Everyone should wear jeans and have three T-shirts, eat rice and beans.

Prisons are big businesses, which I hadn't realized. A lot of these name brand labels that we wear - they're using prison labor and exploiting prisoners, who live in harsh conditions. People need to know about this kind of sweatshop labor, so they can decide what to spend their money on.

There's a lot of buying power from the Middle East. Girls from Dubai want to be able to wear Asos, and you have people travelling all the way to the States just to go shopping.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.