The changing styles are the ...

The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness.
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 Thorstein Veblen

Quotes from the same author

Invention is the mother of necessity.
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 Thorstein Veblen
While the proximate ground of discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time.
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 Thorstein Veblen
The chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay.
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 Thorstein Veblen
It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.
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 Thorstein Veblen
Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.
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 Thorstein Veblen