The Quote Garden ™

 I dig old books. ™

 Est. 1998

Home      About      Contact      Terms      Privacy

Already numbers of our thinkers are beginning to realize that the Midas-touch of Commercialism does not satisfy... ~M.F. Canfield, "Die Wanderlust," To‑Morrow, June 1905


God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 millions took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. ~Mahatma Gandhi


..."Madison Avenue," that mythical advertising copy writer who is supposed to persuade us to wallow in cosmetics and tail-fin cars. We have more Things in our garages and kitchens and cellars than Louis Quatorze had in the whole of Versailles. We are drowning in Things... We are lost in a sluggish, sun-oiled sleep beneath a beach umbrella, dreaming of More and More. ~Archibald MacLeish, in LIFE, "Eloquent Guides to America's National Purpose," 1960  [a little altered —tg]


The last few centuries have seen a mad scramble for recognition by commercial and dominating industrial interests... [T]oday industrialism and commercialism are enthroned Molochs, demanding worship and, at times, human sacrifice. ~William Armstrong Fairburn, Mentality and Freedom, 1917


Love your life, poor as it is... The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace... Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts... It is life near the bone where it is sweetest... Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. ~Henry David Thoreau


To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. ~E. B. White, 1954


MAMMON, n.  The god of the world's leading religion. ~Ambrose Bierce


Our incurable instinct to acquire... ~Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), diary, 1950, translated from the Swedish by Leif Sjöberg and W. H. Auden, Markings, 1964


Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. ~Edward Abbey


Let's live with that small pittance that we have;
Who covets more is evermore a slave.
~Robert Herrick


We realize we can't have everything, and so begins the mad scramble to have everything else. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Home      About      Contact      Terms      Privacy

www.quotegarden.com/consumerism.html
Last saved 2025 Jan 09 Thu 13:12 CST