Quotes About Consumerism

Companies are very, very good - better than consumers themselves - at knowing what consumers are actually craving.

It's all very well setting up your own brand of face cream or exercise wear - but Christ, it's so shallow.

The world does not need another credit card.

We know for sure that customers want to save money. Everybody wants a value. And we also know people want to save time.

To customers, it's the shirt that matters, not where it's made.

I see the same coffee table everywhere. It's mass marketing.

I hate to say it - it breaks my heart - but we're a tacky, money-obsessed culture.

Scarcity is a good sales tactic if you are selling something people want.

It's not a long-term business model to take advantage of your consumers in ways that are not sustainable.

Practically everything from hairstyles to lifestyles is endorsed as some sort of drug to be taken Now for Instant Relief.

We are living in a time in which movies such as 'Super Size Me' and 'An Inconvenient Truth' have made box-office history, and books such as 'No Logo' and my own, 'The Silent Takeover,' are bestsellers.

Disclosure of the full monthly costs that consumers pay is the first step to ensuring that cable companies stop taking advantage of consumers.

I grew up on EC comic books and 'Tales From the Crypt,' which were all loaded with humor, bad jokes, and puns. I can have that kind of fun and make these comic book movies but, at the same time, talk about things I want to talk about - whether it's consumerism or the Bush administration or war.

The unreasoned boast abounds that the good life is found in accumulation, that "more is better.

Most people have no need for more clothes. They buy more not because they need clothes, but because they want to keep up with the fashions. Hang the fashions! Buy what you need. Wear your clothes until they are worn out. Stop trying to impress people with your clothes and impress them with your life.

We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.

We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.' ...It is time to awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.

If cell phones came with a cigarette dispenser, they'd be the greatest stupid invention ever.

Eight floors of the kind of consumer garbage that L.A. is famous for. Need a Ferrari jacket? Sure. You're a race car driver. Vroom vroom. Need silk designer socks that cost more than neurosurgery? We have that too. Come on down to the Beverly Center for something bright and shiny and leave feeling poorer, puzzled, and dead inside.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.

The scientists have given [modern man] the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, and false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have.

Wal-Mart doesn't really care about your faith. Wal-Mart cares if you have money to spend, and it is going to be as generic as possible in exploiting the holiday season for every buck it can make.

With paper printed books, you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash, which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.

The world was filling up with people, it seemed to him, who pulled their punches everywhere they went in life. Light beer, decaf coffee, low-sodium seltzer.