Conspicuous Consumption Quotes

• 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 Veblen

  Mean, Names, Community

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.54, e-artnow

  87 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Gentleman, Leisure

  The Theory of the Leisure Class ch. 4 (1899) See Rae 1

  89 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Life, Success, Eye

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.27, Courier Corporation

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Spiritual, Errors, Limited Resources

  Barbara Kingsolver (2010). “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating”, p.67, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Respect

  63 Copy quote

• It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost, and at any risk to the rest of the community.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Business, Community, Risk

  Thorstein Veblen (1994). “Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in Recent Times : the Case of America”, p.191, Transaction Publishers

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.

  Dennis Lehane

  Lying, Home, Unconditional Love

  50 Copy quote

• Unrestrained automobility, hedonism, individualism, and conspicuous consumption cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. A spiritually impoverished world cannot be sustained because meaninglessness, anomie, and despair will corrode the desire to be sustained and the belief that humanity is worth sustaining. But these are the very things that distinguish the modern age from its predecessors, Genuine sustainability, in other words, will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process akin to humankind growing up to a fuller stature.

  David W. Orr

  Growing Up, Giving, Humanity

  30 Copy quote

• The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of--career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.

  Germaine Greer

  Rip, Hippie, Ambition

  Germaine Greer (1990). “The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings”, p.121, Atlantic Monthly Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Too much of what led up to the crisis in the old bubble days—the conspicuous consumption, the latter-day Gatsbyism—was fueled by a need to fill a huge emotional and psychological void left by the absence of meaningful work. When people cease to find meaning in work, when work is boring, alienating, and dehumanizing, the only option becomes the urge to consume—to buy happiness off the shelf, a phenomenon we now know cannot suffice in the long term.

  Richard Florida

  Meaningful, Emotional, Long

  7 Copy quote

• All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Business, Analysis, Use

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THORSTEIN VEBLEN Ultimate Collection: 8 Books & 50+ Business Essays and Articles in Warfare and Economics: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning In America, Panem et Circenses, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, The Use of Loan Credit in Business…”, p.1089, e-artnow

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• We need way more intimacy than nearly anyone considers normal. Always hungry for it, we seek solace and sustenance in the closest available substitutes: television, shopping, pornography, conspicuous consumption - anything to ease the hurt, to feel connected, or to project an image by which we might be seen and known, or at least see and know ourselves.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Hurt, Shopping, Ease

  12 Copy quote

• In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.

  Thorstein Veblen

  School, Law, Dancing

  The Higher Learning in America ch. 7 (1918)

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Thorstein Veblen

  Life, Beautiful, Eye

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.26, e-artnow

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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 Veblen

  Patriotism, Politics, Spirit

  Thorstein Veblen (1994). “Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in Recent Times : the Case of America”, p.38, Transaction Publishers

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most difficult thing is the decision to act!

  Amelia Earhart

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  "The Official Website of Amelia Earhart/ Quotes". www.ameliaearhart.com.

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• The students [of the 60's] substituted conspicuous compassion for their parents' conspicuous consumption.

  Allan Bloom

  Compassion, Parent, Students

  "The Closing of the American Mind". Book by Allan Bloom, 1987.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hollywood has gone from the capital of conspicuous consumption to the cutting edge of conspicuous conservation.

  Arianna Huffington

  Cutting, Hollywood, Gone

  4 Copy quote

• I just don't like conspicuous consumption. I find it distasteful.

  Tim Gunn

  Consumption, Distasteful

  4 Copy quote

• I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. I wish to speak to and for those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and the Domestication of Conspicuous Consumption.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lying, Writing, Heart

  Preface to the second edition of "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" by Kenneth Rexroth, 1953.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source