Zygmunt Bauman Quotes

We live in a disposable, 'cast-off and throw-away' society that has largely lost any real sense of permanence. Ours is a world of expiration dates, limited shelf life, and planned obsolescence. Nothing is absolute.

I see groups that are hot one minute, and next time you see them, they're asking if you want a soda with that Happy Meal.

It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.

To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear.

I love how the reality of fashion is all about something for that moment and then the extremity of dismissal.

The fundamental dogma of Modernism - that, if the past is irrelevant to the future, then today is irrelevant to tomorrow - has created a throwaway society of disposable objects. That is sick.

She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers.

It's true that the biggest value of life is that it's going to stop. I was thinking when I was in New York the last time that all that we see that has importance is man-made. It isn't nature-made. And when I was looking through the window, looking at New York, I was so moved by humanity's desire for immortality-because that's what it is.

We are truth-speakers, we men of Gondor. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt. "Not if I found it on the highway would I take it," I said. Even if I were such a man as to desire this thing, and even though I knew not clearly what this thing was when I spoke, still I should take those words as a vow, and be held by them.

Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!

It's always consoling to know that today's Christmas gifts are tomorrow's garage sales.

When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires.

Commitment means losing yourself to gain something temporary. Nothing lasts. Not looks. Not love.

Nothing is durable, I think anybody who thinks sex is durable is going to have a lot of grief.

Going to a junkyard is a sobering experience. There you can see the ultimate destination of almost everything we desired.

I will do anything. Anything, Blaire, just to be near you. I can’t think about anything else. I can’t focus on anything. So never think you’re inconveniencing me. You need me, I’m there.

Friends come and go but banners hang forever.

Why pray for the Kingdom of God to come unless you have in your heart a desire and a willingness to aid in its establishment? Praying for His will to be done and then not trying to live it, gives you a negative answer at once. You would not grant something to a child who showed that attitude towards a request he is making of you. If we pray for the success of some cause or enterprise, manifestly we are in sympathy with it. It is the height of disloyalty to pray for God's will to be done, and then fail to conform our lives to that will.

Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

Not one is constant, but everything is changing.

I admit I'm a fool for you, because your mine, I walk the line.

It is a constant change. Not one body is constant.