Quotes About Consumerism

In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness

What better place to look for trash than in America - the land of consumption and waste?

Cute-and-furry was always an easier sell than carapaced-and-multilegged, for some obscure reason. Grownups, so unreasonable...

a grand explosion of culturally sanctioned greed. Presents, presents, presents.

a grand explosion of culturally sanctioned greed. Presents, presents, presents. They

I tried not to think of my one excursion to Whole Foods, over a year ago, where I found myself paralyzed by all the special food for special people, whose special murmurings seemed to be saying, Out of my way! I want a Tofurkey!

Many people desire things they do not need.

Happiness can be measured by what one does not need, but often to see is to want.

industry that spends $36 billion a year on marketing messages precisely to persuade us to eat more, and eat at different times, eat in the car, eat in front of television, and eat highly processed foods

They won't stop killing the whales. They make dog- and cat-food out of them, face creams, lipstick. They kill the whales to feed the dogs so the dogs can shit on the pavement and the people can walk in it.

Because that's not what the B-man is, either. You think he's this crazy old hobo, but he's not. He's a poet. And a philosopher. And a teacher. And it's not him that's crazy, Benny Oh. It's the fucking world we live in. It's capitalism that's crazy. It's neoliberalism, and materialism, and our fucked-up consumer culture that's crazy.

the newly empowered advertising industry used its forked tongue to convert citizens into consumers. But

Advertising departments, as you know, are crawling with people whose frontal lobes are so underdeveloped that if you flatter them a bit they'll swear shit is platinum.

The sheer magnitude and sameness of mass-produced and mass-marketed goods that Americans have grown to expect can be really disorienting.

O money, money, how blindly thou hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused! Thou are health and liberty and strength, and he that has thee may rattle his pockets at the foul fiend!

I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.

Materialism is the only form of distraction from true bliss.

When any creativity becomes useful, it is sucked into the vortex of commercialism, and when a thing becomes commercial, it becomes the enemy of man.

Things, things, things. Always more things, and success is seen as the abundance of things.

Success is no longer content. It's how it sells.

We are members of a strange species that devotes its energies to climbing the ladder of success in order to make money to buy things we don't like.

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

increasingly women are buying stuff for themselves with their own money. They buy their own toys.