Quotes About Consumerism

Everywhere we turn, there is advertising. You can't swing a dead social media consultant without hitting some.

report adds fuel to the ongoing disagreement between those who believe branding is a fundamental component of human existence -- like eating, breathing, sex and shoplifting -- and those who believe it's just a load of marketing bullshit.

most of what we call "brand loyalty" is simply habit, convenience, mild satisfaction or easy availability.

Fashion is like the id. It makes you desire things you shouldn't.

Pet stores just sell their animals.

Jack bought it for $6.99 at T.J. Maxx, a discount clothing store where hip goes to die.

Even here, out in the supposed sticks, the strip malls dominated. There were all the customary mega-stores—the Chef Central, the Home Depot, the Old Navy—the country uniting in bloated monotony. The

Trilby's face appeared on dolls, fans, writing paper, puzzles, and there were ice cream bars made in the shape of her feet.

If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage

pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing.

He wore Armani suits and drove a Jaguar, but finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning. The very fact that he existed in this world would eventually be forgotten. 'Such a shame, he was so young,' people might say. Or they might not.

And in garbage we find material proof that there is no plan for stewarding the earth, that resources are not being conserved, that waste and destruction are the necessary analogues of consumer society. This

I know it's exciting to get an item on sale. But if you're buying for the discounts and not because it's something you need or want - either for yourself or for a gift - you're going about things the wrong way. Think of it this way: Saving 30% is great, but if you didn't buy at all, you'd be saving 100%, which is even better.

Brand loyalty starts in the cradle and ends in the grave, as I wrote in my first book, 'Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers.'

Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.

Yeah, I was a child of American popular culture.

The Mall Of America, outside Minneapolis, is just a mall. Yeah, it's big. So, like, instead of your typical 12 Starbucks, there are 30.

Women are the only 'oppressed' group that is able to buy most of the $10 billion worth of cosmetics each year; the only oppressed group that spends more on high fashion, brand-name clothing than its oppressors; the only oppressed group that watches more TV.

Billions are spent in advertising every year to make you think horrible things are good for you and to get your money for things that will kill you.

The whole Valentine's thing is fine, but you don't back it up right next to the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year. Unbelievable. And we find it acceptable.

Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?

We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.

We need to transform our system so people know what they are paying for health care, so they know whether they are getting good quality health care, and so they have a reason and ability to care.

Material things are not helpful after a certain degree of saturation. So you turn to other products. I think that therapy is a product that can transform you. But why does it need to be packaged as a product? Why can't I work on myself with my friends and family?