The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Thorstein VeblenRead
In 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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Wealth is often judged through societal standards that can be vague and undefined.
Thorstein Veblen's quote highlights the societal expectation to adhere to certain, often ambiguous, norms regarding wealth and status. He suggests that individuals feel pressured to meet these standards in order to be accepted and valued by their community, illustrating the complex relationship between social standing and material success.
Themes
WealthSocietyCommunityStatusExpectations
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social dynamics, one might quote Veblen to discuss pressures of wealth in community interactions.
More from Thorstein Veblen
All quotes βConspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
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
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