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.

The abjectly poor, and all those person whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.

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

Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind.

There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.

Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.

Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.