Consumerism Quotes

“The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didn't order any credit cards! We don't spend what we don't have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?”

“The American success formula is first to get a home of your own, then to get a car of your own so you don't have to stay in that home of your own.”

“Never buy anything simply because it is expensive.”

“Are you better off than you were four years ago? One of my favorite quotes Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores ... Is there more or less unemployment?”

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”

“We used to be hunter-gatherers, now we're shopper-borrowers.”

“Never buy a thing you don't want merely because it is dear.”

“I rationalize shop. I buy a dress because I need change for gum.”

“While I do occasionally order items on the Internet, it's hard to teach an old shopper new tricks. I'm convinced that the catalogue will eventually disappear, but not until the last baby boomers have kicked off their smelly Nikes and been buried in mulch.”

“Impulse buying is not macho. Men rarely call the Home Shopping Network.”

“Everyone has a telephone. Whether they can afford it or not. It's one of those things that people have, regardless of their income.”

“Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power. They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability. They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value.”

“As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility.”

“I have damaged my intellect trying to imagine why a man should want to invent a repeating clock, and how another man could be found to lust after it and buy it. The man who can guess these riddles is far on the way to guess why the human race was invented - which is another riddle which tires me.”

“I had a box of Ritz crackers, and on the back of the box, they had all these suggestions for what to put on top of the Ritz. Try it with cheese. Try it with peanut butter. Come on, man, they're crackers, that's why I got them. I like crackers! I didn't buy them because they're little edible plates!”

“Pepperidge Farm bread. That's fancy bread. You can tell it's fancy because it's wrapped twice. You open it, and it still isn't open. That's why I don't buy it. I don't need another step between me and toast.”

“XM radio doesn't have commercials, so after about thirty minutes of listening to it, I'm like, "What should I buy?"”

“I hate turkeys. If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There's turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Some one needs to tell the turkey, 'man, just be yourself.'”

“Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.”

“They take great pride in making their dinner cost much; I take my pride in making my dinner cost so little.”

“Every McDonald's commercial ends the same way: Prices and participation may vary. I wanna open a McDonald's and not participate in anything. I wanna be a stubborn McDonald's owner. "Cheeseburgers?" "Nope! We got spaghetti, and blankets."”

“They could take sesame seeds off the market and I wouldn't even care. I can't imagine 5 years from now saying, "Remember sesame seeds? What happened? All the buns are blank!"”

“When the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

“There are two reasons why anybody buys anything. The real reason, and the reason they give you.”

“It was our love of foreign cloth that ousted the wheel from its position of dignity.”