#conspicuous

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#clothing #conspicuous-consumption #fashion #fashion-industry #tattoo

For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#displays #expression #first #individuality #natural

Where consumption is both conspicuous and competitive, humanity will never run out of new wishes. All the while, industry creates new desires that are marketed, in the great fashion paradox, as both novelty and need. ↗

— James Buchan

#competitive #conspicuous #consumption #creates #desires

But picketing - picketing for or against something, and handing out literature - these are conspicuously formal actions. They have to be understood as indirect communication. ↗

— Tony Conrad

#against #communication #conspicuously #formal #handing

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

#basis #community #conspicuous #consumption #gaining

Individual scientists like myself - and many more conspicuous - pointed to the dangers of radioactive fallout over Canada if we were to launch nuclear weapons to intercept incoming bombers. ↗

— John Charles Polanyi

#canada #conspicuous #dangers #fallout #incoming

We shall say clearly that any symbol conspicuously displaying religious affiliation in school is prohibited. ↗

— Jean-Pierre Raffarin

#any #clearly #conspicuously #displaying #prohibited

If Bill Finger created Batman, where is Bill Finger's byline on my strip? It is conspicuous by its absence. ↗

— Bob Kane

#batman #bill #conspicuous #created #finger

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously. ↗

— Barbara Deming

#certain #conspicuously #course #deter #deterrence

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

— Thorstein Veblen

#consumption #gentleman #goods #leisure #means