395 Quotes About Consumerism

The phrase "consumer society" complements the description of the present social order as an "industrial society." Needs are tailored by the mass media to create a public demand for utterly useless commodities, each carefully engineered to deteriorate after a predetermined period of time. The plundering of the human spirit by the marketplace is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.

You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

Our modern cities have become in large part agglomerations of bedroom apartments in which men and women spiritually wither away and their personalities become trivialized by the petty concerns of amusement, consumption, and small talk.

Books like Twilight are not art. They are mass-produced crap that is meant to be consumed by the widest possible audience, for the largest possible profit.

On Sundays when I need something to lift my spirits, I do one of two things: I patrol the neighborhood scouring the items on display at garage sales, or I go to a box store. I crave the fleeting bliss of object accumulation. It’s an escape from reality, but I don’t feel any shame. At the end of the day that’s what we’re all in the market for.

If only the wanderer could have seen the real city. He imagined it beautiful and untainted, a forgotten relic of bygone days

It is even more foolish to buy an unnecessary thing on credit.

He picked up a greasy black stove and chewed it like a toffee. There were delicious crumbs of chrome on it. He followed that with a double-decker bedstead and the brass knobs made his eyes crackle with joy. Never before had the Iron Man eaten such delicacies. As he lay there, a big truck turned into the yard and unloaded a pile of rusty chain. The Iron Man lifted a handful and let it dangle into his mouth - better than any spaghetti.So there they left him. It was an Iron Man's heaven.

Because our needs are our little daily dreams The little things to be done that project us into tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the future; trivial things that we plan to buy next week, allowing us to think that next week we'll still be alive.