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The aesthetic serviceability of objects of beauty is not greatly nor universally heightened by possession.

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
Beauty
Heightened
Universally
Greatly
Aesthetic
Possession
Objects

More quotes by Thorstein Veblen

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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 requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful.
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Socialism is a dead horse.
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In aesthetic theory it might be extremely difficult, if not quite impracticable, to draw a line between the canon of classicism, or regard for the archaic, and the canon of beauty.
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Labor wants pride and joy in doing good work, a sense of making or doing something beautiful or useful - to be treated with dignity and respect as brother and sister.
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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 machine technology takes no cognizance of conventionally established rules of precedence it knows neither manners nor breeding and can make no use of any of the attributes of worth.
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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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Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
Thorstein Veblen
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Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force.
Thorstein Veblen
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The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.
Thorstein Veblen
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No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
Thorstein Veblen
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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.
Thorstein Veblen
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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.
Thorstein Veblen
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Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.
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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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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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.
Thorstein Veblen
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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.
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