Quote

The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.

Thorstein Veblen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thorstein Veblen
Age: 72 †
Born: 1857
Born: July 30
Died: 1929
Died: August 3
Economist
Sociologist
University Professor
Writer
Manitowoc County
Wisconsin
Thorstein Bunde Veblen
Movement
Proposition
Opinion
Propositions
Class
Commonplace
Means
Leisure
Social
Popular
Mean
Evolution
Commonplaces
Long
Office
Conserve
Novel
Retard

More quotes by Thorstein Veblen

Image
The possession of wealth confers honor it is an invidious distinction.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
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.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
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
Image
Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
The domestic life of most classes is relatively shabby, as compared with the éclat of that overt portion of their life that is carried on before the eyes of observers.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
The machine technology takes no cognizance of conventionally established rules of precedence it knows neither manners nor breeding and can make no use of any of the attributes of worth.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is... present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
Invention is the mother of necessity.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
Instead of investing in the goods as they pass between producer and consumer, as the merchant does, the businessman now invests in the processes of industry.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
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 consumes much time and effort failure to acquire it is easy of detection.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
The aesthetic serviceability of objects of beauty is not greatly nor universally heightened by possession.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
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
Image
Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
Socialism is a dead horse.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to that complacency which we call self-respect.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
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.
Thorstein Veblen