Michael Pollan Quotes

Amazon is now the definitive source for data about whole sets of products - fungible consumer products. EBay is the authoritative source for the secondary market of those products. Google is the authority for information about facts, but they're relatively undifferentiated.

Just about everything I own was made in China. Just about everything you own was made in China, too.

I've sold everything from fashion, make-up, couture magazines, radio, reality television, movies. There isn't a thing I haven't sold, including Tampax. You name it.

If you look hard enough, you'll find that many of the products we use every day - chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, antiperspirants, colognes, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins - are results of manufactured habits.

People enjoy our meat and our poultry, as I do as a consumer.

I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles if I had to.

Black market sounds negative, but, in fact, everybody loved the black markets during the communist era. It was the only place that officials and others could get shoes and consumer products. There were shortages everywhere. The black market during the Soviet era was essentially the only capitalism there was.

Our rockets can find Halley's comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs, and many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.

All American consumers have the same needs - to buy great consumer products, with savings and value, and with the convenience of easy delivery.

Food tech has been kind of an area that we have been making a number of investments in. Kind of a big boring industry, but a lot of people eat.

There's absolutely no doubt consumers have more choice than ever, and the standards of all that provide food have improved over time.

Every year, the average American eats as much as 33 pounds of cheese. That's up to 60,000 calories and 3,100 grams of saturated fat. So why do we eat so much cheese? Mainly it's because the government is in cahoots with the processed food industry. And instead of responding in earnest to the health crisis, they've spent the past 30 years getting people to eat more. This is the story of how we ended up doing just that.

Law Number L: The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's, but four times as long as the official's who created it.

Wisdom is what separates average people from extraordinary people.

beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone beware the average man the average woman beware their love, their love is average seeks average

One of our neighbors is a salami distributor, and they pretty well - I mean, we used their salami to make a rocket engine out of. They just look at us and they're amused, they're fine with it.

The Internet is just one of those things that contemporary humans can spend millions of "practice" events at, that the average human a thousand years ago had absolutely no exposure to. Our brains are massively remodeled by this exposure--but so, too, by reading, by television, by video games, by modern electronics, by contemporary music, by contemporary "tools," etc.

With people in the world such as 'Jamie Oliver' and [TV chef] Clarissa Dickson-Wright there isn't much hope for animals.

To be great at whatever it is that you do, it's going to take some discipline to separate yourself from the average.

When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones; few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket.

You can pay certain people more money and stuff but that's just going to be a transfer from one group to another. The only way people's wages are going to rise overall, or average median income is going to rise, is if you increase productivity.

Science is starting to show that our brains are less able to detect calories in liquids. So, people in the know, including food industry executives, when they run into health trouble, the first thing they do is cut calories out of all the liquids that they drink as a way of maintaining their weight.

When you go to bat as many times as I do, you're bound to get a good average. That's why I keep my projects diversified.

An important factor to note is that it's rare for anyone to sell a first novel written before they turned 30-35; long-format fiction tends to require a bunch of experience of human life that takes time to acquire. So your average mid-career novelist is in their forties to fifties!

I'm a singer. I'm a dancer. I'm a performer. I'm an actress. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. It makes me a better parent, a better person. I think I can just handle more than the average bear, you know?