Michael Pollan Quotes

In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church. We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods.

Corporatization is the descendant of industrialization.

I'm not interested in being commodified. I'm not into being sold. I'm not a slave.

In general, the Western body has become a global brand.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

Whether or not the standard of living made possible by mass production and in turn by mass circulation, is supported by and filled with the work of us hucksters, I guess is something that only history can decide.

The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

A Big Mac - the communion wafer of consumption.

To me, America is just another market.

Modernization is found in markets.

The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably means also production for the masses.

The production of goods had become an end in itself and the consumption of goods only the means to further production.

Western fundamentalism: By this term I mean the elevation of Western modernity above all other ways of knowing and being and it includes adherence to capitalism, individualism, patriarchy, scientific rationalism, ‘Christian’ morality, commodification of the environment, private property and a belief in progress.

Commerce seems to be covering every aspect of our lives now. Which me, because I'm a romantic, is sad for me to say.

Everything in our world is branded.

The modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top

I think one of the problems with the capitalist mainstream is this: no matter what you create to respond or resist it they will buy it.

I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment.

That is why we may say that the historical development of capitalism has involved the thrust towards the commodification of everything.

My image is a statement of the symbols of the harsh, impersonal products and brash materialistic objects on which America is built today. It is a projection of everything that can be bought and sold, and practical but impermanent symbols that sustain us.

The nation no longer stands for the enlightenment tradition, but rather for military-political hegemony and the total commodification of life.

None of the activity stolen by work can be regained by submitting to what work has produced. - The Society of The Spectacle

The danger is in what we codify, commodify, and exploit.

The typical American believes that no necessity of the soul is free and that there are precious few, if any, which cannot be bought.

One God, one market, one truth, one consumer.