“We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.”

“Some crushes just never went away. They built, instead, into something permanent, obsessive and all consuming.”

“Regardless of the overall state of the economy, there is now a large enough elite made up of new multi-millionaires and billionaires for Wall Street to see the group as "superconsumers," able to carry consumer demand all on their own.”

“When we talk about drugs, we blame the producers, not the consumers. But when we talk about weapons, we blame the consumers, no the producers. The reason consists, as I understand, in the place of power. In the case of drugs, the products are the others, not us; in the case of weapons, the consumers are the others; we limit ourselves to their production.”

“Though the details differ across the world, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth consuming, hostility provoking rituals, the anti-factual, counter-productive fantasies of religion.”

“The modern economist … is used to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”

“The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products.”

“We go about in the night and are consumed by fire.”
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

“The double reservoir at the top shows the amount of money in the hands of individuals and available for expenditure in consumption. This is what we have previously called the consumers' fund. The reservoir is divided into two parts in order graphically to represent the fact that a large part of the money received by individuals is income, most of which is spent in consumption; while a smaller part is money received from the sale of real estate, bonds and stocks, most of which is reinvested. The two parts of the reservoir, however, are connected with pipes, in order to take account of the fact that some income is invested and some money received from the sale of securities is spent in consumption. These connecting pipes are important. We must bear in mind that they are always partly, and never wholly, clogged. By their aid, we may visualize the fact that we have no means of knowing how much of the consumers' fund actually will be spent in consumption in any given period of time.”

“I'd much rather have the consumer buy a Wii, some accessories, and a ton of games, vs. buying any of my competitor's products.”