Inspirational consumption quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
Powerful Collection of Most Famous Consumption Quotes
Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases. – William Shenstone
Truth is commodity in political consumption. – Toba Beta
I’m not afraid of a world with less consumerism, less ‘stuff’ and no economic growth. I’m far more frightened of the opposite. – Rob Hopkins
The level of consumption that we identify with success is utterly unsustainable. We’re gobbling up the world. – John Robbins
We have an overdraft with the earth something in excess of 130 per cent. We currently consume something like 30 per cent over and above what we are replacing and rather like an overdraft at a bank that can’t go on. – Michael Meacher
Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility. – E. F. Schumacher
The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value. – Theodore Roosevelt
Violent consumption demands violent production. – Bryant McGill
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
If we’re talking about overconsumption, we’re talking about what we’re doing. If we’re talking about overpopulation, we’re somehow blaming the planetary predicament on poor families in India, or Africa, or parts of the Middle East. That really ain’t fair. – Fred Pearce
The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting. – Ivan Illich
Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it. – Ellen Willis
The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way. – Thich Nhat Hanh
The new markets that arise from ecological constraints will dominate the 21st century economy, and so will markets for knowledge. – Graciela Chichilnisky
The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things. – Elise M. Boulding
The process of consumption… is the final act in the economic drama. – Kenneth E. Boulding
The transformation of capitalism is unstoppable because we need limits on resources for humans to survive. – Graciela Chichilnisky
We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children. – Joe Romm
The new morality does not consist in saving but in expanding consumption. – Simon Patten
There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment. – Noam Chomsky
I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use. – Mother Teresa
Therefore, this is a question of whether we, humans, can change our culture and begin to truly care for all Creation, nurture all Life and thereby avert our own extinction. As such, this is a deeply spiritual issue and we can begin to act today, regardless of age. But the good news is that this is not a question of whether we will change our culture, but a question of when. – Sailesh Rao
If anything needs to get fixed in society, it’s people’s consumption of other people’s problems. – Corey Feldman
Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence. – Vandana Shiva
Anyone who thinks consumption can expand forever on a finite planet is either insane or an economist. – E. F. Schumacher
So, ‘green growth’ – the design and use of clean technologies – is important, but it will not suffice to do the job : contraction here is required if we want to avoid the worst-case scenario from materializing. – Olivier De Schutter
Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come. I think people in the mass media, journalists, film makers and others, you can contribute to the collective awakening if you are awake and then your life will embody that awakening. – Thich Nhat Hanh
The conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners. – Barbara Kingsolver
Revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts. – Thomas Jefferson
The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet. – Fidel Castro
The pattern is clear: if we could speed up time, it would seem as if the global economy is crashing against the earth — the Great Collision. – James Gustave Speth
We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks – water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land – and not by generating renewable flows. – Joe Romm
Indicators determine policies. The almost universal use of GDP-based indicators to measure progress has helped justify policies around the world that are based on rapid material progress at the expense of environmental preservation, cultures, and community cohesion. – Karma Ura
Overconsumption is the mother of all environmental problems. For the first time in the history of capitalism, consumption itself has become controversial. – Kalle Lasn
In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption. – Raoul Vaneigem
Progress should be people-oriented. – King Wangchuck of Bhutan
A less growth-driven economy will improve people’s work-life balance. Enhanced investment in public goods will provide lasting returns to the nation’s prosperity. – T. Jackson
Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. – Theodore Roosevelt
Consumption is a social relationship, the dominant relationship in our society-one that makes it harder and harder for people to hold together, to create community. – Juliet B. Schor
Economics is all about consumption. People either spend money now or they use financial instruments – like bonds, stocks and savings accounts – so they can spend more later. – Adam Davidson
A Simple lifestyle of reduced consumption allows more time for interaction with living, dynamic beings, more opportunity for meeting the Other more fully and unencumbered. – Stephanie Kaza
We live in a finite world with finite resources. Although it may sometimes seem quite big, earth is really very small – a tiny blue and green oasis of life in a cold universe. – David Suzuki
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. – Anton Chekhov
We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness – and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there’s no problem. – William McDonough
Over-consumption is a cancer eating away at our spiritual vitals. It distances us from the great masses of broken bleeding humanity. It converts us into materialists. We become less able to ask the moral questions. – Richard J. Foster
You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you value your time and money. – James Surowiecki
Where consumption is both conspicuous and competitive, humanity will never run out of new wishes. All the while, industry creates new desires that are marketed, in the great fashion paradox, as both novelty and need. – James Buchan
The key message of the Club of Rome is more valid than ever. The awareness about the limits of growth is increasing day after day, but too slowly to avoid future risks. – Enrico Giovannini
There must be more to life than having everything. – Maurice Sendak
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace. – John Lennon
In business, we have to move the paradigm from maximising financial profit in the short term to long-term value creation – to bridge the gap between company and shareholder interest, and the common good. – Peter Blom
The miserable consumption of the poor is partly the result of the ostentatious demands of the rich. There isn’t enough for both, and the latter get far more than they need…But could anything seriously be done about it? John Kenneth Galbraith
In the rare cases where it occurs, a failure to increase one’s visible consumption when the means for an increase are at hand is felt in popular apprehension to call for explanation, and unworthy motives of miserliness are imputed. – Thorstein Veblen
To the ideal of high consumption and the downgrading of spiritual values corresponds a conception of injustice that centers exclusively on the problem of consumption; and equality in consumption cannot be achieved except by violence. – Jacques Ellul
This over-consumption is also manifest in our use of raw materials. It can even be found in our dietary habits… . People are well aware of this. The root of the problem lies in a selfish world view which inflates personal consumption beyond the essential. – Yehuda Levi
The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a biological need. – Herbert Marcuse
A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand. – Dorothy L. Sayers
We need to accept that consumption is not the end goal of our life and stop measuring our well-being simply on the basis of earnings. We need to explicitly take the quality of our work-related life into account in judging our well-being. – Ha-Joon Chang
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. – Adam Smith
Excess consumption doesn’t make people happy. We can continue to provide for our needs, but we can’t continue the endless pursuit of ever more consumer goods. There is no energy source that can provide enough consumer goods to meet our human and emotional needs; there never has been, and that’s why it’s been such a fruitless pursuit. – Tim DeChristopher
At present, there can be little doubt that the whole of mankind is in mortal danger, not because we are short of scientific and technological know-how, but because we tend to use it destructively, without wisdom. More education can help us only if produces more wisdom. – E. F. Schumacher
Consumption never creates wealth. – Kurt Richebacher
The real danger to the Earth lies in this excessive consumption. – Yehuda Levi
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. – Thorstein Veblen
Investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date. – Warren Buffett
Reducing consumption is imperative, but it’s pointless to cut out meat and cars while having lots of children. – Madeleine Bunting
The model of the consumer society is something that will one day end. My personal view is that too much consumption is wrong. – Mikhail Gorbachev
If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers. – B. F. Skinner
Every century or so, fundamental changes in the nature of consumption create new demand patterns that existing enterprises can’t meet. – Shoshana Zuboff
Things can get only so bad. People want to eat, so at some point they resist further cuts to their consumption – it’s not a bottomless pit. – Edmund Phelps
Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant. – Karl Marx
The goals of content are consumption, then behavior. The goals of social are participation, then behavior. – Jay Baer
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. – Adam Smith
A healthy economy is largely a result of a reasonable balance between consumption today and consumption deferred, and it’s pretty clear that balance has been ridiculously out of whack for a while. – Adam Davidson
The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one-third of the world’s resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people’s lands. That’s what’s going on. – Winona LaDuke
