395 Quotes About Consumerism

And since one of the main purposes of social policy is to keep the population passive, people with power are going to want to eliminate anything that tends to encourage the population to get involved in planning―because popular involvement threatens the monopoly of power by business, and it also stimulates popular organizations, and mobilizes people, and probably would lead to redistribution of profits, and so on.

This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience.

Psychotherapy and counselling should make people aware of themselves and of the difficulties which they face. This then gives them the freedom to choose for themselves. In this sense, unlike behaviour therapy, psychotherapy is value-free: no advice, suggestions or recriminations are given. Indeed the only value of psychotherapy is respect for the individual. Such respect, however, in a mechanistic and objectifying society ... becomes a political act.

I think we're moving toward a world where all the consumers under a certain age will probably tend to identify more with their consumer status or with the products they consume then they would with ... any sort of antiquated notion of nationality.

People buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't like.

Confronted with this double madness of the labourers killing themselves with over-production and vegetating in abstinence, the great problem of capitalist production is no longer to find producers and to multiply their powers but to discover consumers, to excite their appetites and create in them fictitious needs.

Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets

As far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched.

I suppose I’ve come a long wayfrom: being drunk enough to drive;tired enough to replace sleep withpills; irresponsible enough withmoney to steal for it; and dumb enoughto ruin perfectly normal relationships;but smart enough to know the difference—that every lifestyle change is justa new prison