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• Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.  Wikipedia
• Consumerism: The belief that it is good for people to spend a lot of money on goods and services.  Merriam Webster
• Consumerism: The concept that an ever-expanding consumption of goods is advantageous to the economy.  Dictionary.com
• Materialism,  Excess

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Consumerism fuels the economy …

• Be glad that you’re greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren’t. Mignon McLaughlin
• Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things. Philip Slater
• The gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought to have – and that is a moral problem, not an economic one. Paul Heyne
• The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it by consuming its products. John Kenneth Galbraith

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… and is fuelled itself by advertising …

• Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. From the movie Fight Club
• One of life’s great misconceptions is the belief if I get what I want, I’ll be happy. Years of research, and your own experience if you look at it carefully, will tell you that’s not so:  if you get what you want you will quickly get used to it and want something else instead.  But we have a hard time remembering this.  Advertising and the media play into these desires, telling us we can be happy if we just buy the right things, wear the right clothes, get the latest home entertainment or kitchen gadget.  Richard O’Connor
• Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn’t see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will. t least the ancient Greeks were being honest. Chuck Palahniuk
• Advertising tries to stimulate our sensuous desires, converting luxuries into necessities, but it only intensifies man’s inner misery. The business world is bent on creating hungers which its wares never satisfy, and thus it adds to the frustrations and broken minds of our times. Archbishop Fulton Sheen
• Advertising

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… and corporate propaganda

• An active propaganda machinery controlled bv the world’s largest corporations constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause our distress, and economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to the human species. David Korten
• All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. Noam Chomsky

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Consumerism has become a global force, but not one necessarily for good…

• Many ideas have struggled over the centuries to dominate the planet. Fascism. Communism. Democracy. Religion. But only one has achieved total supremacy. Its compulsive attractions rob its followers of reason and good sense. It has created unsustainable inequalities and threatened to tear apart the very fabric of society. More powerful than any religion, it has reached into every corner of the globe. It is consumerism. Jonathon Porritt
• Consumerism is our national religion. Jennifer Stone

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… although some would disagree

• Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty; rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams. Raoul Vaneigem

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Consumerism makes us constantly aware of what we don’t have …

• Consumer culture makes us constantly aware of what we do not have. Aaron Freeman
• Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now? Chuck Palahniuk

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… which is the very opposite of contentment

• Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. Oprah Winfrey
• Contentment is a state of grace, a state of peace and happiness, appreciation and enjoyment for what is, right now. Desires, in contrast, can never be satisfied. Once we get what we crave, we soon find it less satisfying than we expected, so we strive for something else. The only escape from this perpetual wheel of want is to discover the contentment and perfection we already have. Gillian Stokes
• It’s not about having what you want. It’s about wanting what you have and what you are, right at this moment. Zen saying
• They say he who is not happy with what he has, will not be happy with what he gets. Karl Moore
• This seems to be the central dilemma of human life – that it is easier to desire what is over there than to appreciate what is right here. Byron Brown
• Contentment

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Consumerism encourages people to find meaning in buying things …

• Modern individuals rarely see the need to adopt a philosophy of life. They instead tend to spend their days working hard to be able to afford the latest consumer gadget, in the resolute belief that if only they buy enough stuff, they will have a life that is both meaningful and maximally fulfilling. William B. Irvine
• The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. Herbert Marcuse

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… but this is the last place true meaning can be found

• There must be more to life than having everything! Maurice Sendak
• The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today. Albert Schweitzer
• All men need something to poetize and idealize their life a little-something which they value for more than its use and which is a symbol of their emancipation from the mere materialism and drudgery of daily life. Theodore E. Parker
• So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. Morrie Schwartz
• Meaning

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Consumerism can never satisfy our deepest needs or make us lastingly happy

• Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work: The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming. Eckhart Tolle
• The accumulation of material possessions, which I refer to by the technical term of “stuff,” doesn’t feed the soul. It doesn’t matter how much stuff you accumulate; it won’t satisfy your spiritual nature. Stuff is like junk food to the soul, and just as junk food won’t nurture your body, neither will accumulating more stuff. Brad Swift
• Your soul is not from the world of form; this explains why the world of form cannot fully satisfy your soul. Sampo Kaasila
• Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. Henry David Thoreau
• Although they posses enough, and more than enough still they yearn for more. Ovid
• Wanting is something “having” cannot cure. Joe Fortenberry
• There is never enough in the world to satisfy the dissatisfied heart. Christina Feldman
• People are realizing that what seemed important to them in their lives–materialism and consumerism–doesn’t work at all to make a happy heart. It actually makes an unhappy heart.  And an unhappy world. Sylvia Boorstein
• You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy. Eric Hoffer
• We know that material things don’t offer contentment, but we still buy more–more of the props and gadgets our culture tells us we must have in order to be happy and “happening.” Our addiction to consumption distracts us from seeing that we are disconnected from ourselves, from our truth and from one another. Any euphoria we gain from our material gains is fleeting at best. Susan L. Taylor
• They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The studies reveal that beyond the point of providing for food, shelter, and safety, increases in wealth do little to improve people’s well- being and happiness. And when people organise their lives around attaining wealth and possessions, they are essentially wasting their time as far as well-being is concerned. By concentrating on such a profitless style of life, they leave themselves little opportunity to pursue goals that could fulfil their needs and improve the quality of their lives. Tim Kasser
• The folly of endless consumerism sends us on a wild goose-chase for happiness through materialism. Bryant H. McGill
• Excessive consumption leads to bigger houses, faster cars, trendier clothes, fancier technology, and overfilled drawers. It promises happiness, but never delivers. Instead, it results in a desire for more… a desire which is promoted by the world around us. Joshua Becket
• Needs,  Happiness

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In a consumerist society, we often become possessed by our possessions

• Most people seek after what they do not possess and are thus enslaved by the very things they want to acquire. Anwar El- Sadat
• The things you used to own, now they own you. Chuck Palahniuk
• Don’t let your possessions possess you. Jackson Brown Jr.
• The more things you own, the more they own you.
• Once you become detached from things, they don’t own you any longer. Wayne Dyer
• Any half-awake materialist well knows – that which you hold holds you. Tom Robbins
• But it is not the rich person only who is under the domination of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it. George MacDonald
• The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
• Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions. Peace Pilgrim
• You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you. Chuck Palahniuk
• Non-attachment

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Consumerism enslaves us in craving, addiction and envy

• In our rich consumers’ civilization, we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions. Max Lerner
• Who covets more, is evermore a slave. Robert Herrick
• In a consumer society, there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. Ivan Illi
• Cravings,  Addiction,  Envy

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Consumerism traps us on a hamster wheel

• I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest, to make money they don’t want, to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like. Emile Gauvreau
• Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job, you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. Ellen Goodman
• Work to survive; survive by consuming; survive to consume: the hellish cycle is complete. Raoul Vaneigem

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Consumerism is not a great friend of the environment

• If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers. Satish Kumar
• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed. Mohandas K. Gandhi
• Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. William Ruckelshaus
• If the hole we’ve dug ourselves into is consumerism, it doesn’t particularly help that your shovel is a fashionable shade of green. Earon Davis
• An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth – in short, materialism – does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited. E.F. Schumacher
• What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau
• The metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags. Shana Alexander
• These temple destroyers, devotees of raging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty dollar. John Muir
• Everything in excess is opposed to nature. Hippocrates
• 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
• Environmental care

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Consumerism is all about keeping up with the Jones’s

• We call it keeping up with the Joneses. They buy a boat and we buy a bigger one.  They get a new TV and we get a big screen.  They start a business and we start planning our articles of incorporation and the first stock release.  And while we’re so busy keeping up, we ignore our soul, the inner voice, that’s telling us that it really wants to teach children to read. While it helps to identify with each other, we’re not the same. So why compare ourselves on the basis of material things? Are you walking a path with heart in your own life, regardless of what others have? Melody Beattie
• Just pretending to be rich keeps some people poor. Monsieur Marc
• Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought of as poor. Robert Mallett
• Comparison

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Consumerism encourages people to go into debt

• Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.
• Credit buying is much like being drunk. The buzz happens immediately, and it gives you a life…The hangover comes the day after. Joyce Brothers
• Debts are nowadays like children begot with pleasure, but brought forth in pain. Moliere
• Debt is the worst poverty. Thomas Fuller

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Consumerism makes a mockery of even religious festivals

• To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year. Elwyn Brooks White
• Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
• In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea. Richard Bach

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Some are turning away from consumerism to a simpler life

• A minimalist is simply one who questions the necessity of things, and who tries to live with what’s necessary, rather than with consumerism. Leo Babauta
• Simple living

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Don’t be scared to buck the social trend

• If you’re planning to embark on a master’s journey, you might find yourself bucking current trends in American life. Our hyped- up consumerist society is engaged, in fact, in an all-out war on mastery. George Leonard

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Focus on community and connection, not just consuming

• In our hectic, fast-paced, consumer-driven society, it’s common to feel overwhelmed, isolated and alone. Many are re- discovering the healing and empowering role that community can bring to our lives. The sense of belonging we feel when we make the time to take an active role in our communities can give us a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Robert Alan Silverstein
• Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set ourselves on the fruitless mission of filling the gaping hole within us with material things. Blindly, we consume more and more, believing we are hungry for more food, status, or money, yet really, we are hungry for connection. Vironika Tugaleva
• Community,  Connection

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Be a producer, not just a consumer

• You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than you do to consume wealth without producing it. George Bernard Shaw
• An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced. Ayn Rand

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Know there is more to life than just consuming

• The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing. W. R.Inge
• It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy; but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy. George Horace Lorimer
• Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me. Steve Jobs
• That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don’t spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes. Denis Waitley
• People first, then money, then things. Suze Orman
• Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein

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Some argue consumerism has done some good

• What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Andy Warhol
• In the kingdom of consumption, the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption. The dictatorship of consumer goods has finally destroyed the barriers of blood, lineage and race. Raoul Vaneigem

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As a consumer, know you do have power to do some good

• I feel more confident than ever that the power to save the planet rests with the individual consumer. Denis Hayes
• Make ethical choices in what we buy, do, and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws. Marc Bekoff
• The consumer, so it is said, is the king… each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done as he wants. Paul A. Samuelson

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• The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. Mad Magazine
• A shopping cart flipped upside down forms a cage that I use to protect myself from consumerism. Jarod Kintz
• My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can’t make your children carry. Bill Bryson
• All I want is more and more and more. Is that asking too much? Ashleigh Brilliant
• I want it all – and I want it delivered.
• You can’t have everything. Where would you put it? Steven Wright
• It isn’t generosity–it’s only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me. Jean-Paul Sartre
• That’s sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real.” Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. “Real love, real friends, real body parts… Jess C. Scott
• The reality of loving God is loving him like he’s a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff. Criss Jami
• A 60-day warranty guarantees that the product will self-destruct on the 61st day. Sintetos’s First Law of Consumerism
• If the hole we’ve dug ourselves into is consumerism, it doesn’t particularly help that your shovel is a fashionable shade of green. Earon Davis
• From a commercial point of view if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. Katharine Whitehorn

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