{"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["addiction","connection","consumerism","hope","love","materialism","spirituality"],"id":2553,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things—though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside.","author":"Jess C. Scott","tags":["consumerism","cyberpunk","elven-charm","humankind","insightful","life","materialism","modernity","money","self-discovery","society","technology","truth","urban-fantasy"],"id":6012,"author_id":"Jess+C.+Scott"},{"text":"You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.","author":"Colson Whitehead","tags":["chain-stores","change","consumerism","individuality","loss","memories","modern-society","mom-and-pop-stores","neighborhoods","new-york-city","retail","transience"],"id":6042,"author_id":"Colson+Whitehead"},{"text":"A balanced dieT to make you die with a tea, consists of holding two bags of cookies on each hand and a voracious hunger to consume.","author":"Ana Claudia Antunes","tags":["consumerism","consumption","cookies","diet-industry","dieting","humorous","industrial-food","nourishment","nourishment-of-soul","sugar-addiction"],"id":10837,"author_id":"Ana+Claudia+Antunes"},{"text":"In the marketing society, we seek fulfillment but settle for abundance. Prisoners of plenty, we have the freedom to consume in stead of our freedom to find our place in the world.","author":"Clive Hamilton","tags":["consumerism","freedom","society"],"id":11751,"author_id":"Clive+Hamilton"},{"text":"We know – it has been measured in many experiments – that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.” A whole culture is being infantilised.","author":"Jonathan Sacks","tags":["consumerism","desire","education","parenting"],"id":16494,"author_id":"Jonathan+Sacks"},{"text":"The prose is deeply inspired by the tension between post- totalitarianism and consumer democracy. I am constantly probing the soft fleshy parts of the American dream.","author":"Alina Stefanescu","tags":["consumerism","totalitarianism","writing-life"],"id":21186,"author_id":"Alina+Stefanescu"},{"text":"The creek that was once a fishery for Atlantic salmon, a swimming hole for kids, and a focal point of community life now runs as brown as chocolate milk. Allied Chemical and its successors deny any role in the formation of the mudboils. They claim it was an act of God. What kind of God would that be?","author":"Robin Wall Kimmerer","tags":["capitalism","consumerism","contamination","theft"],"id":22072,"author_id":"Robin+Wall+Kimmerer"},{"text":"As universities have turned into businesses, so students have turned into consumers.","author":"Kenan Malik","tags":["capitalism","consumerism","education","ethics","society","university"],"id":22536,"author_id":"Kenan+Malik"},{"text":"We no longer live life. We consume it.","author":"Vicki Robin","tags":["consumerism","money"],"id":24914,"author_id":"Vicki+Robin"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":172,"pages":18,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}