Thorstein Veblen Quotes

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

In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.

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.

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 consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.

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.

The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery

The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature.

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.

Invention is the mother of necessity.

It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost, and at any risk to the rest of the community.