Convenience Culture Quotes

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

If I could get a deal on whatever my impulse was, whenever my impulse struck, and it was nearby, I would use that all the time. It would reshape the way that I shop.

We don't walk. We overeat because we've made it easy to overeat. We have fast-food joints on every corner. By the way, the 'we' is all of us. It's not the government. It's all of us doing this together.

Americans are used to being pandered to and spoon-fed everything. In a culture that needs caffeine-free cherry chocolate diet Coke, you'd best deliver information with entertainment.

Technology and comfort - having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.

Having a cellphone in your pocket, you can get anything you want anytime you want it. Right then and there, boom, you have it.

The world has changed. People have amazing access to whatever they want, whenever they want it.

There sure are a lot of these 'instant' products on the market. Instant coffee, instant tea, instant pudding, instant cereal... instant dislike.

What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.

Today everything must be easy and it mustn't take time ... ready meals. Powdered hot chocolate and instant coffee ... Living takes time. We need to give each other time.

... there hasn't been a serious life-style trend since the couch potato was sighted, in about 1986, on one of its rare forays to the video store. Cocooning remains a significant mass enterprise, encouraged by the availability of five hundred new cable channels and microwavable popcorn.

On Thanksgiving, you realize you're living in a modern world. Millions of turkeys baste themselves in millions of ovens that clean themselves.

You can find examples of how little we value ourselves everywhere you look. The signs on the front of the convenience stores where Stephen lives in Florida tell the story. Beer, ice, bread and milk are the big come-ons. The order of the words varies, but beer and ice are always two of the top four staples for sale. If we were all taking care of ourselves, wouldn't the convenience stores compete for our dollars with signs that read "Fruit, Vegetables, Bread, Milk"?

100 years ago, buying something you could make was considered wasteful; now making something you could buy is considered wasteful. I am not convinced this is a step in the right direction.

People want everything to come out of a drive thru window. They want it instant and they want it fast. I succumb to that, we all succumb to that. We're in it. That's the culture. So the enemy, the powers that be, the manipulators behind the scenes play to our natural weaknesses.

Especially in the digital age, people want everything now, now, now.

We love things that are convenient.

Oh yes, there's lots of great food in America. But the fast food is about as destructive and evil as it gets. It celebrates a mentality of sloth, convenience, and a cheerful embrace of food we know is hurting us.

The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.

Convenience is the American way.

The world will always choose convenience over reality. It's easier to hate, blame, and fear than it is to understand. No one wants the truth; they want entertainment.

It is surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in cans, and of everything else ready made.

Our 'convenience culture' translates into too-available entertainment options, fast food, sedentary transportation, and the like. The fact is, if you want to eat right and live a healthy lifestyle, you have to work at it.