Who can give me an expert tip about punctuation for the following sentence from a linguistic analysis?
Which punctuation is correct, a or b?

a) The statement „too many people give virtually no thought to what becomes of all these discarded gadgets“ makes the reader feel critical of the issue.
b) The statement, „too many people give virtually no thought to what becomes of all these discarded gadgets,“ makes the reader feel critical of the issue.

I know that direct speech in fiction requires the commas in b), but in a) it feels as if the quote helps to define the noun „statement“.
In example a), I could also put „that“ before the quote, but what if I don’t want to? Comma or no comma? And what about the comma at the end of the quote?