QuoteProject
It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.
Jonathan Safran Foer
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Consumers should not have to discern between ethical and unethical products; such distinctions should be made by regulations.

In this quote, Jonathan Safran Foer argues that it is unfair and impractical to place the burden on consumers to identify which products are ethical or sustainable. Instead, he insists that harmful and unethical goods should be banned, suggesting that regulations must protect people from making dangerous or irresponsible choices, especially when it comes to food sources and children's products.

Themes

ConsumerismEthicsSustainabilityRegulationFoodSafety

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech addressing food safety regulations, one could invoke this quote to highlight the need for stricter laws.

More from Jonathan Safran Foer

We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
Jonathan Safran FoerRead

Similar quotes

In May 1961, South Africa was to be declared a Nationalist Republic. There was a white referendum, but no African was consulted.
Oliver TamboRead
He is, as you say, a remarkable horse, a prodigious horse, although as you very justly observe, a suspicious and untractable character.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.
William Ralph IngeRead
The human world is a long way from meeting the needs of the present, and it is borrowing massively from the future - not only by piling up money debt, but also by degrading the resources from which all real wealth ultimately comes.
Donella MeadowsRead
No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that's just why it remains on the ideological fringe - because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.
Ross DouthatRead
Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.
H. G. WellsRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Jonathan Safran Foer | QuoteProject