Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblenwas an American economist and sociologist. He was famous as a witty critic of capitalism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth30 July 1857
CityCato, WI
CountryUnited States of America
business cost net rest sound
It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community.
grew grow outcome questions research serious
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
class innovation characteristics
Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form.
patriotic eye dust
Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind.
investing doe process
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.
believe editors firsts
The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiment of his reader, and then to tell them what they like to believe...
self complacency possession
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.
book excellence speech
The superior excellence imputed to the book, which imitates the products of antique and obsolete processes, is conceived to be chiefly a superior utility in the aesthetic respect; but it is not unusual to find a well-bred book-lover insisting that the clumsier product is also more serviceable as a vehicle of printed speech.
beautiful fashion expression
The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness.
character expression single-life
These various habits of thought, or habitual expressions of life, are all phases of the single life sequence of the individual; therefore a habit formed in response to a given stimulus will necessarily affect the character of the response made to other stimuli. A modification of human nature at any one point is a modification of human nature as a whole.
aptitude habit individual
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.
patriotism politics spirit
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.