The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Thorstein VeblenRead
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The display of luxury items serves as a way for wealthy individuals to assert their status and reputation.
In this quote, Thorstein Veblen highlights how the ostentatious display of luxury goods is not just about material possession, but rather a reflection of social status and a means to achieve respectability among peers. This behavior of conspicuously consuming valuable items is often associated with individuals who have leisure time and wealth, emphasizing the intersection of economics, social class, and culture.
Themes
ConsumptionLuxuryStatusWealthSocietyReputation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on consumer behavior at a business seminar.
More from Thorstein Veblen
All quotes βIn order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.
Thorstein VeblenRead
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.
Thorstein VeblenRead
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.
Thorstein VeblenRead
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
Thorstein VeblenRead
Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
Thorstein VeblenRead
Similar quotes
We did not domesticate wheat; wheat domesticated us.
Yuval Noah HarariRead
I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed.
Doris LessingRead
What did I know best that I had not written about_x000D_ and Lost? What did I know about truly and care for the most?
Ernest HemingwayRead
The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.
Baron De MontesquieuRead
My turning point was my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It was then that I, who had dedicated most of my life to penetrate the 'secrets' of the universe, realized that there are no secrets. Life is and will always be a mystery.
Paulo CoelhoRead
There is not a separate God for each person. There is one universal intelligence flowing through all of us.
Wayne DyerRead