Overconsumption Quotes

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments. ~ Samuel Johnson

What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells? ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a "disposable" culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society's underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised - they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the "exploited" but the outcast, the "leftovers". ~ Pope Francis

Overpopulation is the problem of the third and fourth World; over-consumption is the problem of the West. The average American child this year will consume as much of the world's resources as twenty children born in India. Deliberate and calculated waste is the central aspect of the American economy. We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air. ~ Richard J. Foster

Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. ~ Ernest Becker

Can we reasonably expect happiness from an insatiable appetite which, no matter how it stuffs its belly, is still psychologically like Oliver Twist in the poorhouse, holding up an empty bowl and begging, "I want some more"? Isn't it possible that our dream of the good society contained, from the beginning, a hidden violation of the Tenth Commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods"? ~ Joy Davidman

We used to say I don't care if I never have any money As long as I have my sweet honey and a shack in the woodland Now we say I don't care if I don't have money, but it's not true We can't live without money, no, because we don't want to We want one of those and two of those, and oh that one looks neat, wrap it up Put it on my MasterCard. Put it on my Visa And I sing it now, hey hey, hey hey, who woulda thunk it Hey hey, hey hey, who woulda thunk it. ~ Greg Brown

It is not earthly riches which make us or our sons happy; for they must either be lost by us in our lifetime, or be possessed when we are dead, by whom we know not, or perhaps by whom we would not. ~ Saint Augustine

But the meaning of life is not ... explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account. ~ Carl Jung

The heart of the issue is not simply that a group that gets a large portion of its budget from the Walton family fortune is unlikely to be highly critical of Walmart. The 1990s was the key decade when the contours of the climate battle were being drawn - when a collective strategy for rising to the challenge was developed and when the first wave of supposed solutions was presented to the public.

It was also the period when Big Green became most enthusiastically pro-corporate, most committed to a low-friction model of social change in which everything had to be 'win- win.' And in the same period many of the corporate partners of groups like the EDF and the Nature Conservancy - Walmart, FedEx, GM - were pushing hard for the global deregulatory framework that has done so much to send emissions soaring.

This alignment of economic interests - combined with the ever powerful desire to be seen as 'serious' in circles where seriousness is equated with toeing the pro-market line - fundamentally shaped how these green groups conceived of the climate challenge from the start. Global warming was not defined as a crisis being fueled by overconsumption, or by high emissions industrial agriculture, or by car culture, or by a trade system that insists that vast geographical distances do not matter - root causes that would have demanded changes in how we live, work, eat, and shop. Instead, climate change was presented as a narrow technical problem with no end of profita ~ Naomi Klein

First, it led to overconsumption, because of what he called the deception of the appetite-control apparatus by the density of the carbohydrates. ~ Gary Taubes

It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Modern capitalism has created a world totally different from anything known before. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. ~ G.K. Chesterton

True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods. ~ Aristotle.

The danger, then, is that materialism is not only shaping how we live but the way we think as well. It influences our consumer tastes and our preference for high-paying jobs, but it also alters our capacity to pray, the nature of our prayers, and the ways in which religious tutelage instructs our values. ~ Robert Wuthnow

McMansions in sprawling suburbs, without mountains of unnecessary packaging, without giant mechanized monofarms, without energy-hogging big-box stores, without electronic billboards, without endless piles of throwaway junk, without the overconsumption of consumer goods no one really needs is not an impoverished world. I disagree with those environmentalists who say we are going to have to make do with less. In fact, we are going to make do with more: more beauty, more community, more fulfillment, more art, more music, and material objects that are fewer in number but superior in utility and aesthetics. The cheap stuff that fills our lives today, however great its quantity, can only cheapen life. ~ Charles Eisenstein

No one who had once learned to identify happiness with wealth ever felt that he had wealth enough. ~ Joy Davidman

If we do not bear the cross of the Master, we will have to bear the cross of the world, with all its earthly goods. Which cross have you taken up? Pause and consider. ~ Sadhu Sundar Singh

If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee. ~ William Shakespeare

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. ~ Adam Smith

Two opposing gospels are fighting one another for the soul of our nation and, increasingly, the world: the gospel of consumption and the gospel of peace. ~ Leonard Sweet

Overconsumption is the mother of all environmental problems. For the first time in the history of capitalism, consumption itself has become controversial. ~ Kalle Lasn

All plenty which is not my God is poverty to me. ~ Saint Augustine

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

And just so you know - that winter forest we walked into first? That was from Through the Looking Glass too. Hey, if you're going to saddle me with the blame for your overconsumption, at least get the book right. ~ Elle Lothlorien

Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny. ~ Plutarch

Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more products and services as a positive thing. It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves, and even kill themselves slowly by overconsumption. Frugality is a disease to be cured. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified. ~ Aesop

Likewise, the world of action, of politics, is reduced to a conflict of views about how to keep the cycle of production and consumption going. Questions of ultimate purpose are excluded from the public world. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find - nothing. ~ Aesop

Overconsumption is a "cancer eating away at our spiritual vitals." It cuts the heart right out of our compassion. It distances us from the great masses of broken bleeding humanity. It converts us into materialists. We become less able to ask moral questions. For example, just because we have the economic muscle to buy up vast amounts of the world's oil, does that give us the right to do so? When the poor farmer of India is unable to buy a gallon of gasoline to run his simple water pump because the world's demand has priced him out of the market, who is to blame? ~ Richard J. Foster

Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself. ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. ~ Benjamin Franklin

And I encourage you all to go shopping more ~ George W. Bush

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty. ~ Winston Churchill

The popular media and conventional wisdom, including the medical profession's traditional approach to nutrition, have created and continue to perpetuate this problem through inadequate, outdated dietary counseling. Attempts to universalize dietary therapies so that one-diet-fits-all influences the flawed claims against meats and fats, thereby encouraging overconsumption of grains. Government-sponsored guides to healthy eating, such as the USDA's food pyramid, which advocates six to eleven servings of grains daily for everyone, lag far behind current research and continue to preach dangerously old-fashioned ideas. Because the USDA's function is largely the promotion of agriculture and agricultural products, there is a clear conflict of interest inherent in any USDA claim of healthful benefits arising from any agricultural product. Popular beliefs and politically motivated promotion, not science, continue to dictate dietary recommendations, leading to debilitating and deadly diseases that are wholly or partly preventable. ~ Ron Hoggan

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. ~ Thomas Jefferson

To the ideal of high consumption and the downgrading of spiritual values corresponds a conception of injustice that centers exclusively on the problem of consumption; and equality in consumption cannot be achieved except by violence. ~ Jacques Ellul

The surplus of society overrides all our traditions and shapes all our philosophies. ~ Walter Weyl

The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. ~ George Perkins Marsh

If the Christ we follow sent out his disciples with no extra possessions (Luke 9:1-6 and 10:1-12) and warned would-be devotees that he had nowhere to lay his head (see Luke 9:57-62), then we must recognize that it is extremely difficult to live in a Christian way in a consumer culture. ~ Marva Dawn

Overconsumption is a concern for people who've made it to regular consumption. I ~ Linda Tirado

But prosperity without a soul is like a corpse whose heart has stopped beating. There is no life, only consumption. ~ Cal Thomas

The reality is that our economy now consists of driving 250 million vehicles around the suburbs and malls and eating fried chicken. We don't manufacture much. We just burn up ever scarcer petroleum in the ever-expanding suburbs built with mortgage money lent to people who haven't a clue. ~ Joe Bageant

To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in terms of money, is not acceptable because it is not realistic. I am thinking as I believe we must think if we wish to discuss the best uses of people, places, and things, and if we wish to give affection some standing in our thoughts. ~ Wendell Berry

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds. ~ Saint Teresa Of Avila

It is not because food, clothes and property are inherently evil that Christians today must lower their standard of living. It is because others are starving. Creation is good. But the one who gave us this gorgeous token of his affection has asked us to share it with our sisters and brothers. ~ Ronald J. Sider

Things are in the saddle. And ride mankind. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Should consumerism be the last thing we accomplish as a species, after all this evolution and the miraculous series of accidents that granted our sentience? Would that not be an utterly dull and inane end to our history? ~ Robert Wringham

We each make our solo voyages to deep, expansive waters. Alone in our contest with the wider world, we test our mettle and seek our trophies, promotions, compliments, and accolades. We strive to be needed and to thereby know that there is a reason for us. We seek to be told we are good because we're too unsure of ourselves to know. Yet often we remain so focused on our neediness that we forget the creatures - human and otherwise - we're drawing into the vortex of our own passion play. All of us have compulsive loves we must forbear. We forget to see that we can engage the world without harming it. And although we fish for approval, the challenge is: to capture our prizes while bringing more to the world than we take. ~ Carl Safina

All of us experience the sad effects of blind submission to consumerism. In the first place it represents crass materialism. At the same time it represents a radical dissatisfaction because one quickly learns that the more one possesses, the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled. ~ Pope John Paul II

The full costs of consumption beyond market prices are hard to determine and hard to see, and they are typically underestimated. The benefits of consumption, by contrast, are immediate and tangible, and they are typically overestimated, thanks in part to an enormous and enormously sophisticated marketing apparatus. This asymmetry contributes to our overconsumption. ~ James Gustave Speth

It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

We are determined not to take as the aim of our life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure, nor to accumulate wealth while millions are hungry and dying. We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. ~ Nhat Hanh

We did not choose to believe that personal choice is the highest human virtue. Rather, we were taught, formed, forced to believe nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen. The irony is that the belief that nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen is a belief that we have not personally chosen! The supermarket and shopping mall have been our school. ~ William Henry Willimon

There are two ways to be rich - one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants. ~ E. Stanley Jones

Not what you possess but what you do with what you have, determines your true worth. ~ Thomas Carlyle