Eric Schlosser quotes

The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Struggle #Doubt #Twenties

So for everything I do, I'm very clear about what I'm doing, and I tell people what it's about. They get a sense of what I'm thinking. I don't let people think I'm going to write something in praise in the meatpacking industry, and then they read it and it's actually attacking the meatpacking industry.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Writing #Thinking #People

Marijuana gives rise to insanity -- not in its users but in the policies directed against it. A nation that sentences the possessor of a single joint to life imprisonment without parole but sets a murderer free after perhaps six years is in the grips of a deep psychosis.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Marijuana #Psychosis #Years

A generation ago, three-quarters of the money used to buy food in the United States was spent to prepare meals at home. Today about half of the money used to buy food is spent at restaurants--mainly at fast food restaurants.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Home #United States #Meals

What we eat has changed more in the last 40 years than in the previous 40,000. The survival of the current food system depends upon widespread ignorance of how it really operates.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Ignorance #Years #Survival

Congress should ban advertising that preys upon children, it should stop subsidizing dead-end jobs, it should pass tougher food safety laws, it should protect American workers from serious harm, it should fight against dangerous concentrations of economic power.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Jobs #Children #Fighting

As a matter of fact, most cases of food poisoning are never linked back to their source.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Matter #Facts #Source

Fast food chains spend a large amount of marketing to get the attention of children. People form their eating habits as children so they try to nurture clients as youngsters.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Children #People #Marketing

One might expect that the families of murder victims would be showered with sympathy and support, embraced by their communities. But in reality they are far more likely to feel isolated, fearful, and ashamed, overwhelmed by grief and guilt, angry at the criminal-justice system, and shunned by their old friends.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Grief #Reality #Justice

Different people, in good faith, can look at the same fact and interpret it differently. But thats where an interesting conversation begins.
-- Eric Schlosser

#People #Interesting #Different

Most fast food is fried. Fried food tastes great, and people dont seem to care about the fat aspect.
-- Eric Schlosser

#People #Care #Taste

The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000…. Now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where the animals and the workers are being abused, and the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are deliberately hidden from us. This isn’t just about what we’re eating. It’s about what we’re allowed to say. What we’re allowed to know.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Animal #Years #Lines

By birth and upbringing, I think I'm emotionally resilient. I don't feel like I'm a depressive person.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Thinking #Birth #Resilient

The market is a tool, and a useful one. But the worship of this tool is a hollow faith. Far more important than any tool is what you make with it.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Important #Tools #Worship

Twenty years ago, teenage boys in the United States drank twice as much milk as soda; now they drink twice as much soda as milk.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Teenage #Boys #Years

Future historians, I hope, will consider the American fast food industry a relic of the twentieth century--a set of attitudes, systems, and beliefs that emerged from postwar southern California, that embodied its limitless faith in technology, that quickly spread across the globe, flourished briefly, and then receded, once its true costs became clear and its thinking became obsolete.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Attitude #Technology #Thinking

The fast-food industry is in very good company with the lead industry and the tobacco industry in how it tries to mislead the public, and how aggressively it goes after anybody who criticizes its business practices.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Food #Practice #Trying

The life's work of Walt Disney and Ray Kroc had come full-circle, uniting in perfect synergy. McDonald's began to sell its hamburgers and french fries at Disney's theme parks. The ethos of McDonaldland and of Disneyland, never far apart, have finally become one. Now you can buy a Happy Meal at the Happiest Place on Earth.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Mcdonalds #Ethos #Circles

Fast food is popular because it's convenient, it's cheap, and it tastes good. But the real cost of eating fast food never appears on the menu.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Real #Cost #Taste

I'd been eating fast food all my life without thinking about it. And the more I learned about the subject, the more intrigued I became.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Thinking #Eating #Fast Food

McDonald's has been extraordinary at site selection; it was a pioneer in studying the best places for retail locations. One of the things it did is study very carefully where sprawl was headed.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Mcdonalds #Pioneers #Retail

The United States now has more prison inmates than full-time farmers.
-- Eric Schlosser

#United States #Inmates #Prison

A public outcry usually masks a private obsession.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Obsession #Mask

The fear of murder has grown so enormous in the United States that it leaves a taint, like the mark of Cain, on everyone murder touches.
-- Eric Schlosser

#United States #Cain #Murder

If the market does indeed embody the sum of all human wishes, then the secret ones are just as important as the ones that are openly displayed,
-- Eric Schlosser

#Secret #Wish #Important

The Golden Arches are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Christian #Arches #Golden

Yes, a cheeseburger and fries is probably my favourite meal. But I don't eat ground beef anymore.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Meals #Beef #Favourite

Today the U.S. government can demand the nation-wide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Softball #Animal #Government

The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you’re eating, because if you knew, you might not want to eat it,
-- Eric Schlosser

#Want #Might #Eating

In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2000, they spent more than $110 billion. Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music—combined.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Book #Car #Video

The executives who run the fast food industry are not bad men. They are businessmen. They will sell free-range, organic, grass-fed hamburgers if you demand it. They will sell whatever sells at a profit.
-- Eric Schlosser

#Running #Men #Hamburgers