The Affluent Society

Quotes

1. Marx profoundly affected those who did not accept his system. His influence extended to those who least supposed they were subject to it.

2. 

   Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.

3. 

   "Poverty" Pitt exclaimed "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States it is not annoying but it is a disgrace.

4. 

   In a community wherepublic services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.

5. 

   In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.

6. 

   The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.

7. 

   It is in the long run that the corporation lives.

8. 

   The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

9. 

   One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.

10. 

    A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.

11. 

    Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.

12. 

    We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.

13. 

    Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego. It is well no doubt, to reflect on how much one owes to others.

14. 

    Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.

15. 

    The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground.

16. 

    Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.

17. 

    More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.

18. 

    Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage.

19. 

    It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

20. 

    Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

21. 

    The massive reduction in risk that is inherent in the development of the modern corporation has been far from fully appreciated.

22. 

    Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.

That’s all the quotes.

22 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more