Thorstein Veblen Quotes

39 quotes in 602 categories

• Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.
• 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…
• Loud dress becomes offensive to people of taste, as evincing an undue desire to reach and impress the untrained sensibilities of the vulgar.
• With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives…
• The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
• There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.
• Invention is the mother of necessity.
• In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
• The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his…
• It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost, and at any risk to the rest of the community.
• Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
• All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.
• In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
• 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…
• With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives…
• No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
• The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery
• 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…
• A protective tariff is a typical conspiracy in restraint of trade.
• English orthography satisfies all the requirements of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective; its acquisition…

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