Conspicuous Consumption Quotes

“...the traits that distinguish the swaggering delinquent and the punctilious gentleman of leisure from the common crowd are, in some measure, marks of an arrested spiritual development. They mark an immature phase, as compared with the stage of development attained by the average adults in the modern industrial community.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption

“The ideal pecuniary [financial] man is like the ideal delinquent in his unscrupulous conversion of goods and persons to his own ends, and in a callous disregard of the feelings and wishes of others and of the remoter effects of his actions; but he is unlike him in possessing a keener sense of status, and in working more consistently and far-sightedly to a remoter end.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption