Quote

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

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
Make
Machine
Machines
Cognizance
Rules
Conventionally
Neither
Precedence
Worth
Breeding
Technology
Attributes
Takes
Established
Use
Manners

More quotes by 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
The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
In aesthetic theory it might be extremely difficult, if not quite impracticable, to draw a line between the canon of classicism, or regard for the archaic, and the canon of beauty.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
The aesthetic serviceability of objects of beauty is not greatly nor universally heightened by possession.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
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
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
Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
The possession of wealth confers honor it is an invidious distinction.
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
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
Image
Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.
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
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
The corset is?a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
Socialism is a dead horse.
Thorstein Veblen
Image
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
Image
Invention is the mother of necessity.
Thorstein Veblen