Thorstein Veblen Quotes

"Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Gentleman, Leisure)

"In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Life, Men, Consequences, Eyes, Leisure)

"In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Wealth, Community, Eyes, Order)

"In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Dancing, Law, Merit, School, University)

"Invention is the mother of necessity."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Mother, Invention, Necessity)

"All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Business)

"Labor wants pride and joy in doing good work, a sense of making or doing something beautiful or useful - to be treated with dignity and respect as brother and sister."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Work, Sister, Brother, Dignity, Joy, Labor, Pride, Respect, Sense)

"It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Business, Community, Gain, Rest, Risk, Sound)

"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
(Related: Strength, Community, Leisure, Name)

"The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Play)

"The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Questions, Research)

"Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Dissension, Nationalism, Service, Sin, Spirit)