Dennis DeYoung Quotes

Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch.

The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.

I formulated the theme behind 'The Grand Illusion' album after observing how American culture creates illusions through advertising and entertainment to convince us that our lives our lacking, in order to sell products.

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

Studies indicate that these children are more susceptible to advertising and even less likely to understand the purpose of this advertising.

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

We all think we're liberated when we have more of everything, don't we? That's what the media tell us.

Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

What Western society teaches us is that if you get enough money, power, and beautiful people to have sex with, that's going to bring you happiness. That's what every commercial, every magazine, music, movie teaches us. That's a fallacy.

I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses - because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing 'trends' rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us.

Don't be sucked in by the su-superior, don't swallow the culture bait, don't drink, don't drink and get beerier and beerier, do learn to discriminate.

As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else's, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.

The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction.

Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.

We live in this world of great promise, where everything seems to offer an unchanging final happiness, if we can only get enough of it. It is very intoxicating.

I was essentially paid to perpetuate the myth that we are all, or should at least try to be, 17 and a size 2 forever.

I think fashion is repulsive. The whole idea that someone else can make clothing that is supposed to be in style and make other people look good is ridiculous. It sickens me to think that there is an industry that plays to the low self-esteem of the general public. I would like the fashion industry to collapse.

Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.

I do remember the moment when, as a child, I realized that the things we call 'TV shows' are really just the stuff that gets put between commercials. Later, I came to see that the kinds of things that get on 'free' TV are shows that help sell products.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

Many self-help books give you these neat, tidy formulas that are really illusions. They dupe people into thinking, 'Well if I can just do that, then everything's going to be okay.' My work differs in that I don't offer quick solutions and simple explanations.

The trouble with glossy magazines is that they tend to be stuffed with articles about handbag designers - the sort of women who, with their perfectly styled lives, immaculate houses, and adoring partners, make you want to become a hermit.

Happiness, as a word, has become sort of equated with these smiling images on television, selling some nice cream or food product or something. It's seen a bit as being a stupid consumer.