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 Copy Share Image
Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today — Jacques Yves Cousteau Copy Share Image
High thinking is inconsistent with a complicated material life based on high speed and imposed on us by mammon worship. — Mahatma Gandhi Copy Share Image
Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. — Ernest Becker Copy Share Image
Modern capitalism has created a world totally different from anything known before. — Lesslie Newbigin Copy Share Image
Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find-nothing. — Aesop Copy Share Image
No one who had once learned to identify happiness with wealth ever felt that he had wealth enough. — Joy Davidman Copy Share Image
The people who have more money and goods than any people in the history of the world spend most of their time… — Jim Wallis Copy Share Image
Too many commercials. Too many lies. Too many celebrities. I don't recognize. Too many brand names. Too many magazines. I got so… — Fred Small Copy Share Image
The horseman serves the horse, The neat-herd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'Tis the… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
It is important to recognize that behind the razzmatazz of consumerism, we all remain dependent on basic natural resources - land, air,… — Klaus Topfer Copy Share Image
How far, O rich, do you extend your senseless avarice? Do you intend to be the sole inhabitants of the earth? Why… — Ambrose Copy Share Image
How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet… — John the Apostle Copy Share Image
The whole attempt to advance the kind of consumer society that depends for its growth on the ceaseless stimulation of unlimited covetousness… — Lesslie Newbigin Copy Share Image
Heaven help a timid child in a trendy tide He really doesn't know That his heart's being taken for a ride Doing… — Mark Heard Copy Share Image
Advertising signs: they con you into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never… — Bob Dylan Copy Share Image
We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
In a consumer society, expectations dare not plateau, because a growing economy depends on rising expectations... The more we let our level… — Paul Brand Copy Share Image
But the instinct of hoarding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the institution of private property… — William Ralph Inge Copy Share Image
The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
So here we are in a country with more wheat and corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything… — Will Rogers Copy Share Image
For why, my brothers and sisters, would you rejoice in silver? Either your silver will perish, or you will, and no one… — Saint Augustine Copy Share Image
That the happiness of man may still remain imperfect, as wants in this place are easily supplied, new wants likewise are easily… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The sense that materialism has gotten out of hand is magnified by the pressures facing middle-class American families. — Robert Wuthnow Copy Share Image
Having rationally endeavored to control nature, is he not now becoming the slave of the objects which he makes? — Pope Paul VI Copy Share Image
The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth. — Franklin D. Roosevelt Copy Share Image
O America, how you've taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. — Martin Luther King, Jr Copy Share Image
Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate… — George Perkins Marsh Copy Share Image
It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without… — Soren Kierkegaard Copy Share Image
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing. — William Ralph Inge Copy Share Image
The surplus of society overrides all our traditions and shapes all our philosophies. — Walter Weyl Copy Share Image
The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and… — Ivan Illich Copy Share Image
Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class. — Matthew Arnold Copy Share Image
True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods. — Aristotle Copy Share Image
What we're talking about is the endless, gullible elevation of necessary levels of comfort and status and everything else at the complete… — Bill McKibben Copy Share Image
This is so rich a country that luxury has developed at the expense of necessities, and even the destitute partake of the… — Dorothy Day Copy Share Image
The answers to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. And the answers to the problems of economy… — Wendell Berry Copy Share Image
Two opposing gospels are fighting one another for the soul of our nation and, increasingly, the world: the gospel of consumption and… — Leonard Sweet Copy Share Image
