Consumer Society Quotes

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

Contrary to popular stereotypes, seeking simplicity doesn't require that you become a monk, a subsistence forager, or a wild-eyed revolutionary. Nor does it mean that you must unconditionally avoid the role of consumer. Rather, simplicity merely requires a bit of personal sacrifice: an adjustment of your habits and routines within consumer society itself. ~ Rolf Potts

I mean that in a consumer society, the family is the means by which most people become tied to a cycle like this: go along with things, so long as you get enough to buy more and more things even though the whole world is exploited so that a relatively small number of people in this country - US! - can live well. (Our own land and air and water are also plundered in the interests of blind consumerism.) ~ Daniel Berrigan

While much of postmodernist analysis should be credited with theoretical imagination, as well as talent for capturing something of the Zeitgeist, this type of analysis nonetheless misses some crucial facts about consumption: that consumption is vitally linked to production; consumption is anchored in concrete relations; and the driving force in consumption is individual interest, as encouraged and often shaped by profit interests. ~ Richard Swedberg

There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating. ~ Alan Kay

The ever-mounting glut of waste materials is characteristic by-product of modern consumer society. It might even be argued that capitalism's continual need to find of generate markets means that disposibility and waste have become the spine of the system. To consume means, literally, to destroy or expend, and in the garbage crisis we confront the underlying truth of a society in which enormous productive capacities and market forces have harnessed human needs and desires, without regard to the long or even short-term future of life on the planet. ~ Stuart Ewen

On the mathematical side, you could in principle build a society in which people were fulfilling their needs and flourishing as human beings in a higher way than in a consumer society, provided you had the right investments in the opportunity to flourish in less materialistic ways. ~ Tim Jackson

[For American consumer society], the country's reserves of ignorance constitute a natural resource as precious as the Mississippi River or the long-lost herds of buffalo. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

The metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags. ~ Shana Alexander

The richer we get in a consumer society, the more acutely we become aware of how many grades of value--of both leisure and labor--we have climbed. The higher we are on the pyramid, the less likely we are to give up time to simple idleness and to apparently nonproductive pursuits. The joy of listening to the neighborhood finch is easily overshadowed by stereophonic recordings of "Bird Songs of the World," the walk through the park downgraded by preparations for a packaged bird-watching tour into the jungle. It becomes difficult to economize time when all commitments are for the long run. Staffan Linder points out that there is a strong tendency for us to over-commit to the future, so that when the future becomes present, we seem to be conscious all the time of having an acute scarcity, simply because we have committed ourselves to about thirty hours a day instead of twenty-four. In addition to the mere fact that time has competitive uses and high marginal utility in an affluent society, this overcommitment creates a sense of pressure and harriedness. ~ Ivan Illich

My argument is not that we must never intervene in nature. My argument is that there is a moral difference between intervention for the sake of health, to cure or prevent disease, and intervention for the sake of achieving a competitive edge for our kids in a consumer society. ~ Michael Sandel

Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion. ~ Christopher Lasch

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 ~ Heather Rogers

The consumer society, directed at making us happy, achieves the opposite. It encourages us to spend money we do not have, to buy things we do not need, for the sake of a happiness that will not last. ~ Jonathan Sacks

In no sense are the robot dogs, automated vacuum cleaners and old-folks lifting machines just examples of yet another consumer society with nothing meaningful left to spend its disposable income on. No, robots are the future. They have been for generations. ~ Our Man In Abiko

It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England. ~ Julie Burchill

Economists use the word consume to mean "utilize economic goods," but the Shorter Oxford Dictionary's definition is more appropriate to ecologists: "To make away with or destroy; to waste or to squander; to use up." The economies that cater to the global consumer society are responsible for the lion's share of the damage that humans have inflicted on common global resources. ~ Alan Thein Durning

Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so attached to the notion of growth that they can't let go of that word, so they refer to recession as a time of "negative growth". ~ Eckhart Tolle

What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and consuming. ~ Eckhart Tolle

The model of the consumer society is something that will one day end. My personal view is that too much consumption is wrong. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

The consumer society hungers for the deviant and unexpected. What else can drive the bizarre shifts in the entertainment landscape that will keep us "buying"? Psychopathy is the only engine powerful enough to light our imaginations, to drive the arts, sciences and industries of the world. ~ J.G. Ballard

Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today's silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society. ~ Tyler Cowen

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. ~ Ivan Illich

Governments and politicians use the family as an indicator of the health and strength of social life. Politicians fear that any weakening of family life will in some way sap the vitality of national life ... The family is also important to businessmen. It is one of the major purchasing groups of our consumer society. ~ Adrian Wilson

the growing materialism of our societies. This materialism informs political discourse at every level, making wealth and its distribution the only issue that is discussed for long. As a result, people think of conservatism merely as a form of complacency towards the current system of material rewards, which has nothing whatever to say about the things that 'money can't buy', or about the effect of the consumer society on our deeper values. Yet ~ Roger Scruton

We have been very effectively pacified by the pernicious ideology of a consumer society that is centered on the cult of the self - an undiluted hedonism and narcissism. That has become a very effective way to divert our attention while the country is reconfigured into a kind of neofeudalism, with a rapacious oligarchic elite and an anemic government that no longer is able to intercede on behalf of citizens but cravenly serves the interests of the oligarchy itself. ~ Chris Hedges

In a consumer society, expectations dare not plateau, because a growing economy depends on rising expectations ... The more we let our level of contentment be determined by outside factors-a new car, fashionable clothes, a prestigious career, social status-the more we relinquish control over our own happiness. ~ Paul Brand

Within a capitalist consumer society, the cult of personality has the power to subsume ideas, to make the person, the personality into the product and not the work itself. ~ Bell Hooks

For a consumer society thrives by stoking unquenchable desires into unsustainable cravings and fanning them with an inflated rage for rights. The restlessness it creates by providing false satisfactions and deadening true desires simultaneously fuels the economy and destroys happiness. ~ Os Guinness

For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization. ~ Niall Ferguson

"Solid wastes" are the discarded leftovers of our advanced consumer society. This growing mountain of garbage and trash represents not only an attitude of indifference toward valuable natural resources, but also a serious economic and public health problem. ~ Jimmy Carter

Most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their selfish consumer society and empire. Yet I suspect ... they do not care. They don't want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins, the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans, or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is therefore welcomed and appreciated. ~ Curtis White

In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

I used to wonder: Is Huxley right or is Orwell right? It turns out they're both right. First you get the new world state and endless diversions as you are disempowered. And then, as we are watching, credit dries up, and the cheap manufactured goods of the consumer society are no longer cheap. Then you get the iron fist of Oceania, of Orwell's 1984. ~ Chris Hedges

It had never occurred to the lords of the consumer society that consumerism as a political philosophy might one day manifest the grave systemic instabilities that Communism had. But as those instabilities multiplied, the country had cracked. Civil society shriveled in the pitiless reign of cash. As the last public spaces were privatized, it became harder and harder for American culture to breathe. Not only were people broke, but they were taunted to madness by commercials, and pitilessly surveilled by privacy-invading hucksters. An ever more aggressive consumer-outreach apparatus caused large numbers of people to simply abandon their official identities.. It was no longer any fun to be an American citizen. ~ Bruce Sterling

Sadly, in our technological, impersonal, and avaricious consumer society, people merely hold on to jobs. They put in their time, leave at the five o'clock bell, pick up their pay checks, and leave the whole business behind them. Work, for so many, becomes a necessary evil. They go at it grudgingly, at best resignedly. It is hard to fault them; the stressful conditions and uncertainty under which so many workers labor force them into an adversarial relationship with their occupations and employers. ~ Robert Dykstra

I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don't need. I'm anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that's it. ~ Paul Auster

And I don't believe in this materialism, in this consumer society, in this capitalism, in this outrageous horror that happens / takes place here ... . I really do believe in something, and I call it "a day will come." And one day it will come. Well, probably it won't come, since they've always destroyed it for us ... . It won't come, and I believe in it anyway. Because if I can't believe in it anymore then I can't write anymore either. ~ Ingeborg Bachmann

The American university has become the final stage of the most all encompassing initiation rite the world has ever known. No society in history has been able to survive without ritual or myth, but ours is the first which has needed such a dull, protracted, destructive, and expensive initiation into its myth. The contemporary world civilization is also the first one which has found it necessary to rationalize its fundamental initiation ritual in the name of education. We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling. We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them. ~ Ivan Illich

Look, I can surely say by now that I've got the antibodies to communism inside me. But when I think of consumer society, with all its tragedies, I wonder which of the two systems is better. ~ Pope John Paul II

I think it would be a great tragedy to devote medical resources and genetic technological breakthroughs to purposes that are not to do with health or medicine, but instead are to do with satisfying the desires that are created by the consumer society. ~ Michael Sandel

In modern consumer society, the attack on mother-child eroticism took its total form; breastfeeding was proscribed and the breasts reserved for the husband's fetishistic delectation. At the same time, babies were segregated, put into cold beds alone and not picked up if they cried. ~ Germaine Greer

If the life-supporting ecosystems of the planet are to survive for future generations, the consumer society will have to dramatically curtail its use of resources - partly by shifting to high-quality, low-input durable goods and partly by seeking fulfillment through leisure, human relationships, and other nonmaterial avenues. We in the consumer society will have to live a technologically sophisticated version of the life-style currently practiced lower on the economic ladder. ~ Alan Thein Durning

There is little or no point being chair of the Labour Party and being ignored when engaging with Labour ministers when you're trying to articulate something that affects ordinary people in society. ~ Colm Keaveney

The danger to a free society is not the guns owned by the citizens but an unconstrained government ... An armed society is a self-governing society, just as a disarmed people are vulnerable to arbitrary power of every kind. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

Those in the grip of the methodological inhibition often refuse to say anything about modern society unless it has been through the fine little mill of The Statistical Ritual. It is usual to say that what they produce is true even if unimportant. I do not agree with this; more and more I wonder how true it is. I wonder how much exactitude, or even pseudo-precision, is here confused with 'truth'; and how much abstracted empiricism is taken as the only 'empirical' manner of work. ~ C. Wright Mills

The Second Amendment has no place in modern society. ~ Alan Dershowitz

We are part of the same society. We are part of the same humanity. When humanity is happy, we will be happy. When humanity is peaceful, our own lives are peaceful. ... We must develop the sense of 'we'. Once you're able to develop that sense of common humanity and the oneness of humanity, then naturally you will want all others to be free from suffering and enjoy happiness. The desire for happiness is a natural instinct shared by everyone. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Starbucks considers a product's success not only in terms of consumer acceptance but also in terms of employee ~ Fast Company

A society which is clamouring for choice, which is filled with many articulate groups, each urging its own brand of salvation, its own variety of economic philosophy, will give each new generation no peace until all have chosen or gone under, unable to bear the conditions of choice. ~ Margaret Mead

When the underlying dream changes, when we successfully remove the blinders of the old cosmological conditioning, we will be able to apply our collective intelligence to its most enlightened purpose. Our lives will speak to us again with clarity and without the manipulation of fear attempting to protect itself from the distorted dream. ~ Amy McTear

We should judge one another. It stops us becoming animals. The pressure of failing in the eyes of society passes for some sort of morality. ~ Adele Parks

One thing that makes France different from other countries is the tradition of social solidarity. People from all backgrounds and political positions are willing to contribute for services and protection of society as a whole - but on the condition that money is being spent effectively and that everyone is paying their part. ~ Francois Hollande

Marriage is an institution that existed before governments existed. It's something that reflects nature and reflects God and God's will for us. And both from the standpoint of faith and reason it makes all the sense in the world. And it's beneficial for society. ~ Rick Santorum

The big thing (that really good fiction) can do is leaping over that wall of self and portraying inner experience and setting up a kind of intimate conversation between two consciousnesses ... the trick is going to be trying to find a way to do it
and for a generation
whose relation to the long sustained, linear verbal communication is fundamentally different. ~ David Foster Wallace

If your motives aren't clean, money itself becomes evil. But When we don't have money enough evil, the world tells us we're losers. So what determines our place in society is not how much kindness is in our hearts but how much evil is in our wallet. ~ Todd McFarlane

The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy. ~ Pascal Bruckner

Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's sake. ~ Charlie Brooker

If you really want to change society, encourage self appreciation. ~ Rene Gaudette

Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the internet. And now, is the basis of the society built on the internet. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved. ~ Alfie Kohn

A town with many men who are less educated and as such ignorant of the real solution to the woes of their society has the same problem as a town with many intellectuals and yet with many problems ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Art is of absolutely no use to the masses ~ Claude Debussy

However, this court is constrained by law, and under the law, I can only conclude that the Government has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so cannot be compelled by this court of law to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules - a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret. ~ Colleen McMahon

From Love In The Time of Apps:
Goodwin had little doubt that in the end he would lose his action for divorce. Where could he get a fair-minded jury? His public image was so tarnished at this point that he even received a letter from the Misogynist Society. For the first time in its history, the letter advised, the Society took the side of a woman. "Our vote," the letter closed with, "was unanimous." On the same day Goodwin received the letter, he saw his photograph on the cover of People Magazine's new line extension, Unpopular People Magazine. Below his photo was a banner proclaiming, "The Most Unpopular Man In America." Goodwin believed the tag to be accurate. ~ Jay Begler

The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon or an affront without making such an amazing noise about it. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Many souls fail to find God because they want a religion which will remake society without remaking themselves. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think. ~ Jane Austen

Diversity matters. Not only in what we look like, or what religion we practice, or in whom we love, but also in how we live our lives, including the order in which we go about things, the seasons in which we are able to create art. Those who are engaged in the arts should be the last to send any other message, because when artists endorse the traditional order of a society, it suggests that they have forgotten their own true role within it. ~ Robin Black

I'm an active lifetime member of the ... Louie, Louie Society and Proud Of It! ~ Timothy Pina

I think a great book - leaving aside other qualities such as narrative power, characterization, style, and so on - is a book that describes the world in a way that has not been done before; and that is recognized by those who read it as telling new truths - about society or the way in which emotional lives are led, or both - such truths having not been previously available, certainly not from official records or government documents, or from journalism or television. ~ Julian Barnes

That disillusionment, moreover, like all other vogues, having had its beginning in the higher strata of society, had descended to the lower, where it was being worn threadbare, and that, now, those who were really and truly bored strove to conceal their misfortune as if it were a vice. ~ Mikhail Lermontov

There might be some sort of justification for the savage societies in which a man had to expect that enemies could murder him at any moment and had to defend himself as best as he could. But there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers. ~ Ayn Rand

If the image of God takes his proper position in society, then many will want to come to God ~ Sunday Adelaja

Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are. ~ Kenneth Rexroth