Quotes by Thorstein Veblen

In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.

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.

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

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.

No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

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

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.