The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive. — Thorstein Veblen Business Copy Share Image
The chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay. — Thorstein Veblen Ability Copy Share Image
The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery — Thorstein Veblen Animal Copy Share Image
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. — Thorstein Veblen Conspicuous consumption Copy Share Image
There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum. — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force. — Thorstein Veblen Conservatism Copy Share Image
All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage. — Thorstein Veblen Analysis Copy Share Image
Loud dress becomes offensive to people of taste, as evincing an undue desire to reach and impress the untrained sensibilities of the… — Thorstein Veblen Clothes Copy Share Image
The corset is?a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work. — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
A standard of living is of the nature of habit. ...it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous… — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful. — Thorstein Veblen Beautiful Copy Share Image
Instead of investing in the goods as they pass between producer and consumer, as the merchant does, the businessman now invests in… — Thorstein Veblen Businessman Copy Share Image
It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost, and at any risk to the rest of… — Thorstein Veblen Business Copy Share Image
The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature. — Thorstein Veblen Addiction Copy Share Image
While the proximate ground of discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is… — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the… — Thorstein Veblen Barbarism Copy Share Image
Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in… — Thorstein Veblen Contribution Copy Share Image
English orthography satisfies all the requirements of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and… — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
These various habits of thought, or habitual expressions of life, are all phases of the single life sequence of the individual; therefore… — Thorstein Veblen Character Copy Share Image
The taste of the more recent accessions to the leisure class proper and of the middle and lower classes still requires a… — Thorstein Veblen Aesthetic Copy Share Image
The individual's habits of thought make an organic complex, the trend of which is necessarily in the direction of serviceability to the… — Thorstein Veblen Complexes Copy Share Image
The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition… — Thorstein Veblen Class Copy Share Image
As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity-'teleological… — Thorstein Veblen Accomplishment Copy Share Image
“The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption… — Thorstein Veblen Alcohol Copy Share Image
It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free… — Thorstein Veblen Absolutes Copy Share Image
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of… — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical… — Thorstein Veblen Amulets Copy Share Image
The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as… — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
A protective tariff is a typical conspiracy in restraint of trade. — Thorstein Veblen China Copy Share Image
The possession of wealth confers honor; it is an invidious distinction. — Thorstein Veblen Distinction Copy Share Image
Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty. — Thorstein Veblen Beauty Copy Share Image
It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in… — Thorstein Veblen Apprehension Copy Share Image
So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to that complacency… — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
Labor wants also pride and joy in doing good work, a sense of making or doing something beautiful or useful - to… — Thorstein Veblen Beautiful Copy Share Image
The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small thief of escaping… — Thorstein Veblen Chance Copy Share Image
The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both. — Thorstein Veblen Beauty Copy Share Image
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite,… — Thorstein Veblen Copy Share Image
