A Quote by Erich Fromm
I think if you ask people what their concept of heaven is, they would say, if they are honest, that it is a big department store, with new things every week - all the money to buy them, and maybe a little more than the neighbours.
Related Quotes
Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them.
Man today is fascinated by the possibility of buying, more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption hungry... To buy the latest gadget, the latest model of anything that is on the market, is the dream of everybody, in comparison to which the real pleasure in use is quite secondary. Modern man, if the dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world.
I do think that we'd do better if we just offered all the bureaucrats in the Department of Education very attractive early retirements. But whether you want to abolish the department is another matter. Maybe there's room for recruiting a lot of visionary people who would do very good things: develop new techniques, new ideas, foster innovative models, disseminate those ideas.
When you have more money than anyone, and you can buy the players that you want, OK, you can buy the quality, and maybe you no longer mind about the other things.
I'd like to put together a think tank of people - economists, futurists, city planners, a few department-store people - to discuss reinventing the department store.
I think having worked in a department store setting, if my life had not taken a drastically different turn when I became an actor, there's a very high probability I would have continued to work at the department store.
I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.
If I go to the department store, I get no excitement: I can buy the entire department store instead of one bag. So I lost excitement of shopping.
Wonderful, I like cars, too, I like all the great things you can buy in a department store. But when you have to buy them in order to stay unaware, comatose, then the price you pay is too high.
That would be nice if [people] stuck [treasury bills] all under a mattress, but they got to buy something with them. Sometimes they buy a treasury note, sometimes they set up sovereign wealth funds. They can do all kinds of things. They can buy our companies here. As long as we consume more than we produce, and we trade away little pieces of the country daily, they're going to own something. Now, they can't run from American assets. I mean every day the rest of the world is going to have about two billion more of American assets than we have, as long as they sell us these goods.
I have to go around and ask people for money, of course, quite a lot. And it's quite an art to ask people for money. But I think that I have to ask them for money for the things that I'm interested in, and of course, money breeds money.
I love being able to go to a store, let's say... a store like Topshop or Zara or maybe even Macy's, depends on what department, and not have to look at the price tag.
Advertising is not intended to brainwash you and make you go out and buy something; that's a real simple-minded way of criticizing it. I think advertising is just designed to make you familiar with this thing, so when you go to the store... Humans like to choose things that are familiar to them; it's just normal human behavior. So I think that when you go to the store, if your brain has been hit enough times with a certain product name, you're more likely, when you're thinking, "Which tennis shoe should I buy?," to say, "Ummm... Nike."
People ask me how I stay thin, and I'm like, 'When you go to the grocery store, buy more bananas than cookies.'
They did ask me to do 'Dancing With The Stars;' I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I'm a little past that stage.
[Being judge] is about being honest and giving everybody a fair shot and telling them what you think. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it isn't. It's more important to be honest than say things to make people feel better. I don't think you have to be rude, but I think you have to be honest. But I think it's really important to be specific: Here's what you did that was great and why. And here's what you did that wasn't great and why.
Related Authors
Abraham Maslow Quotes
American
Psychologist
Carl Jung Quotes
Swiss
Psychologist
Daniel Kahneman Quotes
Israeli
Psychologist
Edward de Bono Quotes
English
Psychologist
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Quotes
American
Psychologist
James Hillman Quotes
American
Psychologist
M. Scott Peck Quotes
American
Psychologist
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Quotes
Hungarian
Psychologist
Nathaniel Branden Quotes
American
Psychologist
Ram Dass Quotes
American
Psychologist
Rollo May Quotes
American
Psychologist
Sigmund Freud Quotes
Austrian
Psychologist
Tara Brach Quotes
American
Psychologist
Viktor E. Frankl Quotes
Austrian
Psychologist
Wayne Dyer Quotes
American
Psychologist