Cornel West Quotes

One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

I think we live in a culture that is actually hedging all of it towards comfort and immediacy, things that scare me. All the things that they sell us as a way of life scare me.

To build enormous palaces, to conquer or to mimic nature, to ransack the world in order to gratify the passions of a man, is not thought of, but to add a few yards of land to your field, to plant an orchard, or enlarge a dwelling, to always be making life more comfortable and convenient, to avoid trouble, and to satisfy the smallest wants without effort and almost without cost. These are small objects, but the soul clings to them; it dwells upon them closely and day by day, till they at last shut out the rest of the world and sometimes intervene between itself and heaven.

I think if you ask what people really mean by happiness today, it is the experience of unlimited consumption - the kind of thing Mr. Huxley described in "Brave New World."

Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.

This has resulted in more and more people becoming inner-directed and having as their only goal, getting as much as they can get out of the system and putting as little into it as possible.

In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.

We can be bought, but we can't be bored.

And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.

It feels so weird to be able to just kind of buy things when I want them or need them.

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

We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.

We’re living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We’d rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other.

You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men.

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.

The insanity of consumption bothers me. Talk about the opiate of the masses. It ain't religion anymore. It's stuff.

Before our eyes we have the results of ideologies such as Marxism, Nazism and fascism, and also of myths like racial superiority, nationalism and ethnic exclusivism. No less pernicious, though not always as obvious, are the effects of materialistic consumerism, in which the exaltation of the individual and the selfish satisfaction of personal aspirations become the ultimate goal of life. In this outlook, the negative effects on others are considered completely irrelevant.

To an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much as sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright

Addiction is the dominant form of a culture that suffers from a superficial spectacle and celebrity-connectivity at its center. It's a form of spiritual emptiness.

The conversation of most middle-class Americans, we are told, revolves around consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, where to eat, the price of the neighbor's house, what's on sale this week, our clothes or someone else's, the best car on the market this year, where to spend a vacation. Apparently we can't stop eating, shopping, or consuming. Success is measured not in terms of love, wisdom, and maturity but by the size of one's pile of possessions.

Our age is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee and toast, with a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with marbles, mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few rides in a year.

...thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness?

We are taught to want a thing. We are taught that having that thing will make us happy. We are taught that having it immediately is the answer. We are taught a corrupted version of success. And love.

In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.