Thorstein Veblen quotes

Thorstein Veblen was an American economist and sociologist best known for his critique of capitalism and the concept of “conspicuous consumption.” His influential work, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” analyzed social status and economic behavior. He remains a key figure in institutional economics and social theory. Here are 51 of his quotes:

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

Thorstein Veblen

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

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

Thorstein Veblen

The possession of wealth confers honor; it is an invidious distinction.

Thorstein Veblen

The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his delinquency has a better chance than the small thief of escaping the rigorous penalty of the law.

Thorstein Veblen

The chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay.

Thorstein Veblen

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

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

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

Thorstein Veblen

It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessary of life.

Thorstein Veblen

It is much more difficult to recede from a scale of expenditure once adopted than it is to extend the accustomed scale in response to an accession of wealth.

Thorstein Veblen

It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

Thorstein Veblen

A standard of living is of the nature of habit. ...it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once become habitual.

Thorstein Veblen

While the proximate ground of discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time.

Thorstein Veblen

From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their industry, and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.

Thorstein Veblen

In the rare cases where it occurs, a failure to increase one's visible consumption when the means for an increase are at hand is felt in popular apprehension to call for explanation, and unworthy motives of miserliness are imputed.

Thorstein Veblen

The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.

Thorstein Veblen

The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful.

Thorstein Veblen

There is probably no cult in which ideals of pecuniary merit have not been called in to supplement the ideals of ceremonial adequacy that guide men's conception of what is right in the matter of sacred apparatus.

Thorstein Veblen

Leisure held the first place at the start, and came to hold a rank very much above wasteful consumption of goods... From that point onward, consumption has gained ground, until, at present, it unquestionably holds the primacy.

Thorstein Veblen

In common with other men, the business man is moved by ideals of serviceability and an aspiration to make the way of life easier for his fellows... Motives of this kind detract from business efficiency, and an undue yielding to them on the part of business men is to be deprecated as an infirmity. Still, throughout men's dealings with one another and with the interests of the community there runs a sense of equity, fair dealing, and workmanlike integrity.

Thorstein Veblen

However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no general increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every one to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods.

Thorstein Veblen