John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce.

I think about capitalism, consumerism, our consumptive nature as a species approaching the 21st century. I certainly don't have the answers.

Somewhere along the way to free-market capitalism, the United States became the most wasteful society on the planet.

In twenty-first-century America, our stories have become one and the same: we work to consume, we live to consume, we are what we consume.

All of my work is meant to evoke a whole bunch of different layers of discord between the attraction and repulsion that we feel toward our consumer habits and our consumer lives.

The corruption of the American soul is consumerism.

Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.

Under capitalism each individual engages in economic planning.

I shop, therefore I am.

In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.

I've felt a little culpable that we entrepreneurs often invent businesses just to drive people to buy more things.

We believe we are the consumers, but we are the consumed.

Most human beings are defined in terms of their capacity to consume.

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

With interest rates artificially low, consumers reduce savings in favor of consumption, and entrepreneurs increase their rates of investment spending.

Madison Avenue makes us addicts of consumerism, using glass wampum to steal our capacity to direct our own lives.

There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.

While the Cold War had us questioning our next-door neighbors, big brands emerged to capture our trust. We became consumers.

Advertising, the product of capitalism, can only justify itself on the premise that the market is a force for good.

America is really happy to be sold something.

Capitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.

But before we can radically reshape the world, we need to shop.

The process of consumption is the final act in the economic drama.

Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV?

Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy.