Consumer Society Quotes

What are we, then? We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty. These things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines... Television with 500 channels... Some guy's name on my underwear.

We used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow Collection.

— I got this dress at a thrift store for one dollar.
— It was worth every penny.
— It's a bridesmaid's dress. Someone loved it intensely for one day, then tossed it. Like a Christmas tree — so special, then, bam, it's on the side of the road with tinsel still clinging to it. Like a sex crime victim, underwear inside out, bound with electrical tape.

People don't want a hero, they want to eat cheeseburgers, play the lotto and watch television.

Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential. And I see it squandered. Goddamn it, an entire generation pumping gas. Waiting tables. Slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We are the middle children of history, men. No purpose or place. We have no great war. No great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression... is our lives. We have all been raised on television to believe that one day we could all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. We are slowly learning that fact. And we are very, very pissed off.

— Murder, crime, poverty. These things don't concern me. What concerns me, are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine. Viagra. Olestra.
— Martha Stewart.
— Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So fuck off with your... sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.

The world has just become... so... inhuman. Everyone's plugged in. Blindingly inarticulate obsessed with money, their careers stupidly, arrogantly content. I can't talk to them. I fight them. I wanna destroy them even. I crave interaction. I crave it. But you just can't anymore. They pull their devices out for every little thing to reinforce their petty, convenient notions. To decide where they are going to shop what they're gonna eat, what movies they are gonna watch, everything they ingest.