  The classical Lagrangian of the Standard Model enjoys the symmetry of the
full conformal group if the mass of the Higgs boson is put to zero. This is a
hint that conformal symmetry may play a fundamental role in the ultimate theory
describing Nature. The origin of scales, such as the Higgs vacuum expectation
value (vev), may result from the spontaneous breakdown of the conformal
symmetry by the dilaton field. In this work, we study whether this classical
setup can be implemented in quantum theory and be phenomenologically viable by
presenting an explicit construction where the exact conformal symmetry can be
preserved and is anomaly free while being spontaneously broken. Not only the
Higgs mass but also the genuine quantum scales like the QCD confinement radius
are generated by the dilaton vev. We also discuss the extension of these ideas
to the theories with dynamical gravity and show that the only finite subgroup
of the local Weyl transformations which is anomaly free corresponds to the
global scale symmetry. This means that the conformal invariance of the flat
space theory is explicitly broken down to the scale symmetry by gravitational
effects related to the Weyl anomaly.
