Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

I think there is some kind of disillusionment in the West about the gains of modernity and of economic growth and it takes a form of skepticism about the gains of prosperity generally.

Travelling, gentlemen, is medieval, today we have means of communication, not to speak of tomorrow and the day after, means of communication that bring the world into our homes, to travel from one place to another is atavistic.

Advertising is the edge of what people know how to do and of human experience and it explains the latest ways progress has changed us to ourselves.

Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.

I don't want people in China to have deep pockets but shallow minds.

In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?

Show business is part of a larger culture, a world-wide culture that must make up to the fact that the accumulation of things doesn't make a life necessary any happier or purposeful.

Culture and possessions, there is the bourgeoisie for you.

I'm very focused on the world and my career and my Porsche turbo and making money and Stevie B. Inc. I'm just living according to the standards of the world.

And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.

It feels so weird to be able to just kind of buy things when I want them or need them.

Today, people are more into the glitz and the glamour of everything. We don't even read the inside of records anymore.

Sometimes I think that our culture lives in its soundbites.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

People look at Instagram and say they want money, they want this, they want that.

The more I stack, the more things I can buy: the more toys, the more houses, and everything. That's the motivation, but I'm also a competitive person. I need goals, and I need that competition and to drive for something.

We live in such a self-gratifying nation, and everything is instantaneous.

...the first sign of civilization is always trash.

In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.

You start admiring someone who's famous for actually doing something---imagine that---and I swear to you I will buy you every item in her entire wardrobe. But over my own dead body will I spend my own time and money turning you into a clone of some brain-dead waste of skin who thinks the pinnacle of achievement is selling her wedding shots to a magazine.