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In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.

Thorstein Veblen

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Thorstein Veblen
Age: 72 †
Born: 1857
Born: July 30
Died: 1929
Died: August 3
Economist
Sociologist
University Professor
Writer
Manitowoc County
Wisconsin
Thorstein Bunde Veblen
Life
Leisure
Consequences
Consequence
Inspire
Eyes
Eye
Beautiful
Ennobling
Men
Civilised

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Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
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There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.
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The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure.
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The aesthetic serviceability of objects of beauty is not greatly nor universally heightened by possession.
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Socialism is a dead horse.
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The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
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The corset is?a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work.
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Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.
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No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
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The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
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The possession of wealth confers honor it is an invidious distinction.
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Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force.
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Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind.
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The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.
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Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life.
Thorstein Veblen
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Instead of investing in the goods as they pass between producer and consumer, as the merchant does, the businessman now invests in the processes of industry.
Thorstein Veblen
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English orthography satisfies all the requirements of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective its acquisition consumes much time and effort failure to acquire it is easy of detection.
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So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to that complacency which we call self-respect.
Thorstein Veblen
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A standard of living is of the nature of habit. ...it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once become habitual.
Thorstein Veblen
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The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful.
Thorstein Veblen