Famous quotes containing the words american, bell and/or consumer:
“The last publicized center of American writing was Manhattan. Its writers became known as the New York Intellectuals. With important connections to publishing, and universities, with access to the major book reviews, they were able to pose as the vanguard of American culture when they were so obsessed with the two Joes—McCarthy and Stalin—that they were to produce only two artists, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, who left town.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Helen’s.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
Pray when will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I am sure I don’t know,
Says the great bell of Bow.”
—Unknown. The Bells of London (l. 13–22)
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)