Quotes About Consumerism

Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more malls than high schools; Americans spend more time shopping than reading. ... Some of the most insightful writing about the American character over the nation's history has been about neither freedom nor democracy but about the crazed impulse to acquire things.

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.

It's been a real success - one of the great business successes in the United States - to break down organization, to separate people too: it's part of consumerism. If you can drive people toward individual consumption, that's the highest goal in life. And furthermore, drive them into debt so they're trapped. You don't have to worry about a democracy function because people are trapped and they're alone.

Consumerism diverts us from thinking about women's rights, it stops us from thinking about Iraq, it stops us from thinking about what's going on in Africa - it stops us from thinking in general.

It's about learning your craft. That's a wonderful thing--especially with today's consumerism and instant gratification. You can'tbuy that. It's about making decisions, corrections, choices. I don't think it's so much about becoming a tennis player. It's about becoming a person.

It's no surprise that if you look at the development of the economy, of consumerism, of all these things that have gotten out of hand over the last hundred years, it happened when men were purposeless, when they didn't actually have a legitimate reason to be moving the species forward because the machines were doing all the hard work.

I'm someone that examines culture and tries to break down why things are the way that they are whether its hip-hop music, sex, race, or consumerism. I try to examine it and scrutinize it to the point where I can write a song.

Make it new is the message not just of modern art but of modern consumerism, of which modern art is largely a mirror image.

Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.