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Creativity Quote by Tom Scholz

"People have been convinced that growth for growth's sake is a good thing"

About this Quote

Scholz’s line lands like a quiet guitar cut through stadium noise: simple, clean, and aimed at a very loud cultural assumption. “Convinced” is the tell. He’s not describing a natural hunger for improvement; he’s pointing to persuasion, to messaging, to a sales job so successful it passed for common sense. Growth isn’t framed as a means (to stability, to craft, to freedom) but as a virtue in itself, the way a band is expected to keep touring bigger rooms even if the music starts sounding like a product line.

Coming from Scholz, it carries extra bite. He’s the rare rock star whose brand was built on meticulous engineering and control: the DIY studio ethic, the refusal to rush, the suspicion of the industry’s assembly line. In that light, the quote reads less like abstract economics and more like a lived critique of a system that confuses expansion with excellence. “For growth’s sake” is the lyrical equivalent of a forced encore: applause demanded, not earned.

The context is a late-20th-century American story where “more” became a moral category. Corporate metrics, suburb sprawl, endless sequels, quarterly targets, and the idea that if you aren’t scaling you’re failing. Scholz pokes that balloon without sounding preachy; he just swaps in one unsettling question: who benefits when we treat constant enlargement as inherently “good”? The subtext is an invitation to value sustainability, mastery, and sufficiency - not as nostalgia, but as resistance to a culture that monetizes restlessness.

Quote Details

TopicEthics & Morality
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Scholz, Tom. (2026, January 16). People have been convinced that growth for growth's sake is a good thing. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-have-been-convinced-that-growth-for-116341/

Chicago Style
Scholz, Tom. "People have been convinced that growth for growth's sake is a good thing." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-have-been-convinced-that-growth-for-116341/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"People have been convinced that growth for growth's sake is a good thing." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-have-been-convinced-that-growth-for-116341/. Accessed 7 Apr. 2026.

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About the Author

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Tom Scholz (born March 10, 1947) is a Musician from USA.

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