Acquisition of Goods Quotes

We value 'stuff' quite highly. Why? Because that 'stuff' apparently matters. Not only that, we use it as a measure of how successful we are, and as a result of that, having more of this 'stuff' often determines how people treat us.

We are living in a material world and I'm a material girl.

People aren't happy unless they buy stuff, and that's because we have become this industrialized nation.

Buying is a profound pleasure.

Watching too much TV can triple our hunger for more possessions, while reducing our personal contentment by about 5 percent for every hour a day we watch.

The more things you own, the more people you need to employ.

...There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end... Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I've decried consumerism. Consumerism is what we are. It is, in a sense, a holy impulse. A human being is someone who joyfully goes in pursuit of things, brings them home, then immediately starts planning how to get more.

People like to own things.

As adults, if our top priorities are constantly directed toward the acquisition of more and better worldly goods, it will not take long to increase our love in those directions. The purchase of a larger house or a nicer car or a more expensive boat may cause us to sacrifice our resources and develop an unwise love for these symbols of success and pleasure. We learn to love that which we serve, and we serve that which we love.

A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

It’s hard, in America, not to equate ‘happiness’ with ‘things’.

Most things in San Francisco can be bought or taken.

False values begin with the worship of things.

That the happiness of man may still remain imperfect, as wants in this place are easily supplied, new wants likewise are easily created; every man, in surveying the shops of London, sees numberless instruments and conveniencies, of which, while he did not know them, he never felt the need; and yet, when use has made them familiar, wonders how life could be supported without them. Thus it comes to pass, that our desires always increase with our possessions; the knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed, impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.

That every person is desirous to obtain, with as little sacrifice as possible, as much as possible of the articles of wealth.

Consumerism is hard to describe when it's the ocean and we're the plankton.