Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, for such a society is a house built upon sand.

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

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.

There’s this idea that somehow you’ve got to keep changing things, and as often as possible. Maybe if people just decided not to buy anything for a while, they’d get a chance to think about what they wanted; what they really liked.

We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.

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

I think if you ask people what their concept of heaven is, they would say, if they are honest, that it is a big department store, with new things every week - all the money to buy them, and maybe a little more than the neighbours.

If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it's going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it's also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways!

Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.

Well, there is a contradiction in a sense. If you're making commercials which sell products which are unhealthy or which are unnecessary, I think that you are part of a system - I am part of a system which encourages people to buy things and do things which are not to their best interest. And to that extent you could say it was contradictory.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.

the metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags.

Consumerism has accustomed us to waste. But throwing food away is like stealing it from the poor and hungry.

I think quality will be increasingly important-we're moving away from a time of fast fashion. But really, the only constant in fashion is that you must keep moving forward, otherwise you'll be left behind.

As riches grow, care follows, and a thirst For more and more.

Every time you buy something consider it a vote of confidence in the company that produced it.

We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.

The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.

Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.

We know that if you have $20 million, it's better to buy a van Gough print than it is buy an executive jet, from the point of view of the environment. But when you start getting down, it's like the recycling question: What are things we can really afford to do, and how much pleasure do we get out of them? We haven't even started to have that discussion, and it's getting awfully late.

I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.

The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products.

Our culture is a capitalist society right? And so in order to always have the idea of the good life, means something you pay money for. Think of being outside of what you have and own, it always has to be receiving a difference.

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.