Ellen Willis Quotes

We always want more. Whether it is better clothes, a bigger house, faster cars, or the latest gadgets, satisfaction in these days of consumerism is difficult to find.

Most of the things we buy are wants. And we call them needs, but they're wants.

The manufacture of desire isn't at the heart - if it isn't absurd to speak of a heart - of the media torrent. Chronic dissatisfaction is at the heart of the matter.

Everyone wants instant gratification: you have to have everything your parents had right away.

Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now , consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.

I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We're inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, 'Gimme, gimme, gimme,' you will always be in short supply.

We live in an era of consumerism and it's all about desire-based consumerism and it has nothing to do with things we actually need.

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

I think we're all hooked, I feel my own hook-ness on immediate gratification you know. I want what I want.

The folly of endless consumerism sends us on a wild goose-chase for happiness through materialism.

The easier things are to buy, the more we consume.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.

Consumer society tantalises us. We then try within ourselves to control the needs that are being constantly stimulated.

We have a bad habit. We buy what we want and beg what we need.

There is nothing wrong with having nice things, but when you are trying to buy nice things to be happy, you are going to hurt. It's not going to work.

We are being conditioned, as a population, to never wait, to never delay our gratification, to accept thoughtless, constant consumption as the new norm. But how we think about consumption and willpower carry enormous implications for the environment and the culture of society as a whole.

You want it, you buy it, you forget it.

It's a wonderful world when you have what you want at all times.

Consumerism thrives on emotional voids.

Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.

Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that's balls - evil. But obviously that's your livelihood.

Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me.

The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.