Sufjan Stevens Quotes

We need to deal with three things that are important: first, we need a very deep reconsideration of how we are dealing with the economy. Second, there must be a very deep reconsideration of our way of life. We cannot simply adopt American-style consumer culture. To Islamize that is to de-Islamize Islam.Thirdly, it is important for us to understand the economy and the environment are common challenges for everyone. This is where the singularity of Islamic principles needs to join the universal values that we share with others.

A real danger threatens the unity of the Canadian people and the preservation of its political existence. This danger is the slow but sure penetration of Americanism into all phases of our national, political, and social life.

Children's television has been grossly over-commercialized. The subtle message is, "Buy me! Buy me!

In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown. But all the more on this account it is necessary to provide a powerful check and counterpoise, lest the pursuit of gain be enhanced to an importance never rightfully its own, lest, in proportion as we enhance our comfort and well-being, comfort and well-being become the main objects of existence, and life's grander motives and meanings be forgotten. We have already transgressed the limit of safety

These days malls are the cathedrals of the modern world, and old buildings that had character are gone to allow for econo-worship and peso-pilgrimages.

I think art maybe has just become very consumer-oriented, and maybe it's always been that way because it is a business.

As a young artist in New York, I thought about postwar Japan - the consumer culture and the loose, deboned feeling prevalent in the character and animation culture. Mixing all those up in order to portray Japanese culture and society was my work.

The promotional environment is part of the world we live in.

Consumerism is the reason Christmas has morphed into a hollow shopping ritual that leaves too many families with debt hangovers and an empty feeling inside.

Culture in general wants to connect ethical issues with consumerism. And we can see that overflowing into something that is consumed so much, which is sports.

The bedroom is an archetype. To me it stands for a lot of the silliness of our modern culture where the kind of things that we worship in our sacred spaces are based on media and movies because we don't really have much else in the way of myths, if that makes sense.

The shan-shui city idea is trying to bring traditional values and ways of living to modern high-rise architecture.

I don't like ads. I don't like selling things. That's not me.

American long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where laborers are either hidden away or dressed up as nonhumans, so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World

We've wanted to produce more in the 19th century and the 20th century in order to give man the possibility for more dignified human life; but actually what has happened is that production and consumption have become means - have ceased to be means and have become ends, and we are production crazy and consumption crazy.

As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information.

The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that.

I'm an American and I want instant gratification.

It all looks American because America, the country that invented mass capitalism and consumerism, got there first. the impact of mass capitalism is now universal.

It [culture] invites people to diminish themselves, and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines, meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue, and Hollywood, and what have you.

I don't make culture. I sell it.

No shame, no solution, no remorse, no retribution, just people selling t-shirts.

It's depressing to see blacks wanting to dive into the mainstream of American commercial life. They come from a magnificent African culture based on aesthetics, and they all want to become fort builders like the vicious people who originally enslaved them.

Life in Anaheim, California, was a commercial for itself, endlessly replayed. Nothing changed; it just spread out farther and farther in the form of neon ooze. What there was always more of had been congealed into permanence long ago, as if the automatic factory that cranked out these objects had jammed in the on position.

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.