Ahmet Ertegun Quotes

Americans are gluttons. We shop with forklifts. We have a holiday where we stuff food into other food. Our strippers wrestle in Jell-O, where other countries have to use mud.

I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity.

Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

I absolutely loathe luxury. It is the one thing I cannot stand.

America's critics can be heard everywhere. It is too much in love with money - worshipping the god of the marketplace, the golden calf. It has too much money, seven of the top 10 banks, eight of the top 10 companies etc. It is too stingy, giving away less of its wealth than other countries. It is vulgar, a rich barbarian.

To me, the word 'decadent' is so difficult to use; it's a very sensitive word, in a way.

Sometimes America gets tempted by the glitz and glamour.

I've never been that person who wants a Rolls Royce or wants to live in a mansion or what have you.

We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much.

Opulence is a crime

The love of Luxury grows by what it feeds upon.

America is a country of excess.

I like extravagance. Letters which give the postman a stiff back to carry, books which overflow from their covers, sexuality which bursts the thermometers.

Luxury destroys more efficiently than war.

In order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things that he considers necessary to his existence.

Luxury is a necessity that begins where necessity ends

People don't want to hear about me having leather walls or gold toilets.

For me, life is not about gold taps and marble all over the place.

Decadence is wonderful.

I've got Ferraris coming out me bum.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Once we are fed, heated, housed and healthy, our extra consumption inevitably has an element of luxury about it. And once luxury enters the scene, the practicalities are in trouble, as women who wear expensive stiletto heels can testify.

Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the gold of the calf.

The corruption of the American soul is consumerism.

We seem to live in an age where we are quietly appalled by the idea of appetites, whether they be for sex, food or diamonds.