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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

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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
Requirement
Shaping
Sustaining
Norm
Requirements
Constraining
Present
Wastefulness
Sense
Selectively
Beautiful
Conspicuous

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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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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.
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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 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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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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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.
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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.
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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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In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
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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.
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Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.
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There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.
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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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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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The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small thief of escaping the rigorous penalty of the law.
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The possession of wealth confers honor it is an invidious distinction.
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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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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.
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