Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Marketing is all pervasive. They're getting marketed products they can't afford - can't ever hope to acquire. They believe the only way they're ever going to achieve happiness is the acquisition of these products. Products they can't afford. They see people living that lifestyle, and they have that lifestyle beamed incessantly into their minds through media, which you know I participate in.

The American dream, what we were taught was, grow up, own a car, own a house. I think that dream's completely changing. We were taught to keep up with the Joneses. Now we're sharing with the Joneses.

I felt pissed off because I realized that you have to teach people in a clichéd way how to be happy-and happiness has become too one thing in American media. Achieving happiness is not really about having a flat stomach and the best car.

The beautiful people in the magazines, got the normal ones living beyond their means.

It's good to be happy and tell us how cool your life is and how awesome you are on social media. It inspires other people to be happy, too. But a lot of times, people are trying to be happy in the wrong ways - with money or with different things that are not true happiness. It's leading people down a rabbit hole that actually doesn't exist. So people think like, "Yo, once I get this money and these cars and stuff, I'ma be so happy." But that's not true. And I feel like that's why it's very important to educate people on different things while you are actually on social media.

I think it's the society that drains us out, and we are in a society where we are driven by money.

The economist Juliet Schor talks about how our reference group has changed over the last twenty-five years. As we spend less time with our neighbors, we're spending more time with people we know from TV and social media, and this becomes our new reference group. The media is full of images of people with wealth, and we're comparing ourselves to them and aspiring to what they have. Instead of keeping up with the Joneses family, we're trying to keep up with the Kardashians, even though it's completely unrealistic.

Making money, getting yourself status in this world is not everything at all. But it has become everything in America. That you really have to get going and keep up with the Jones'. Get a house and a car and other things. And pretty soon you're stymied. Things own you.

Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz - My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

I bought a Hummer before I bought a house, and then I bought a house. Every year, everything doubled. The work was doubling. The money was doubling. The popularity was doubling.

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.

American culture is no longer created by the people... A free, authentic life is no longer possible in AmericaTM today. We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence. Most North Americans now live designer lives-sleep, eat, sit in car, work, shop, watch TV, sleep again. I doubt there's more than a handful of free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We ourselves have been branded.

As adults, if our top priorities are constantly directed toward the acquisition of more and better worldly goods, it will not take long to increase our love in those directions. The purchase of a larger house or a nicer car or a more expensive boat may cause us to sacrifice our resources and develop an unwise love for these symbols of success and pleasure. We learn to love that which we serve, and we serve that which we love.

Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.

[T]he recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing is to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be.

Accumulate, accumulate! This is Moses and the Prophets!

I'm not against people having new cars. I'm against them having you. We spend a tremendous amount impressing somebody at the stoplight who we'll never meet. It makes you broke and keeps you broke.

Nobody's about saving anymore. No one cares about a rainy day anymore. Nobody saves up enough for even an umbrella for a rainy day. It's sad. It really is a new form of slavery. We used to work to be able to afford material things. Now we work for these things. They're the boss. That house you can't afford, that car that's out of your price range, that cellphone that drains your bank account - that's your boss.

I like to walk down Bond Street, thinking of all the things I don't desire.

Pay no attention to pop culture, for it is what poisons our minds and divides our children. Materialism promotes negative values and egotism. Eliminate all of it. It is the plague of Big Business.

I think in society and especially in movies and media we're fed this idea that there's the one or the right person. I think it brings great ambiguity and confusion for people.

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body

Before devising any blueprint that includes the assumption of Having It All, we need to ask ... Why do we need Everything?

It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.

The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself.