Thorstein Veblen > Quotes

“Invention is the mother of necessity.”
― Thorstein Veblen

“The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.”
― Thorstein Veblen

“The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle". It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

“The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.”
― Thorstein Veblen

“Athletics have an obvious advantage over the classics for the purpose of leisure-class learning, since success as an athlete presumes, not only a waste of time, but also a waste of money, as well as the possession of certain highly unindustrial archaic traits of character and temperament.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

“The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

“The hedonistic conception of man is that of a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area but leave him intact...
He is an isolated, definitive human datum, in stable equilibrium except for the buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or another. Self-poised in elemental space, he spins symmetrically about his own spiritual axis until the parallelogram of forces bears down on him, whereupon he follows he line of the resultant”
― Thorstein Veblen

“As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity—“teleological” activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class/The Theory of Business Enterprise

“The classics, and their position of prerogative in the scheme of education to which the higher seminaries of learning cling with such a fond predilection, serve to shape the intellectual attitude and lower the economic efficiency of the new learned generation. They do this not only by holding up an archaic ideal of manhood, but also by the discrimination which they inculcate with respect to the reputable and the disreputable in knowledge. This result is accomplished in two ways: (1) by inspiring an habitual aversion to what is merely useful, as contrasted with what is merely honorific in learning, and so shaping the tastes of the novice that he comes in good faith to find gratification of his tastes solely, or almost solely, in such exercise of the intellect as normally results in no industrial or social gain; and (2) by consuming the learner's time and effort in acquiring knowledge which is of no use, except in so far as this learning has by convention become incorporated into the sum of learning required of the scholar, and has thereby affected the terminology and diction employed in the useful branches of knowledge.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Theory Of The Leisure Class

“Conspicuous abstention from labour therefore becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement and the conventional index of reputability; and conversely, since application to productive labour is a mark of poverty and subjection, it becomes inconsistent with a reputable standing in the community.”
― Thorstein Veblen

“The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works of Thorstein Veblen: Complete writings in political economy and cultural critique: capitalism, industrial revolution, science, and gender

“The upper classes are by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a degree of honour attaches.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class

“She lives with man on terms of equality, knows nothing of that relation of status which is the ancient basis of all distinctions of worth, honor, and repute, and she does not lend herself with facility to an invidious comparison between her owner and his neighbors.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class

“...it is also true that the classics have scarcely lost in absolute value as a voucher of scholastic respectability, since for this purpose it is only necessary that the scholar should be able to put in evidence some learning which is conventionally recognized as evidence of wasted time; and the classics lend themselves with great facility to this use.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

“El botín”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“La advertencia de que el derroche conspicuo es la principal norma que regula el consumo ha sido repetida en más de una ocasión.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“Como regla general”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“Los modales y las formas de la alta sociedad se convierten en elementos clave de su vida de ocio y consumo ostentoso.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“Aquellos empleos que deben clasificarse como explotación son considerados dignos”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“But as we descend the social scale, the point is presently reached where the duties of vicarious leisure and consumption devolve upon the wife alone. In the communities of the Western culture, this point is at present found among the lower middle class.
And here occurs a curious inversion. It is a fact of common observance that in this lower middle class there is no pretence of leisure on the part of the head of the household. Through force of circumstances it has fallen into disuse. But the middle-class wife still carries on the business of vicarious leisure, for the good name of the household and its master. In descending the social scale in any modern industrial community, the primary fact—the conspicuous leisure of the master of the household—disappears at a relatively high point. The head of the middle-class household has been reduced by economic circumstances to turn his hand to gaining a livelihood by occupations which often partake largely of the character of industry, as in the case of the ordinary business man of to-day. But the derivative fact—the vicarious leisure and consumption rendered by the wife, and the auxiliary vicarious performance of leisure by menials—remains in vogue as a conventionality which the demands of reputability will not suffer to be slighted. It is by no means an uncommon spectacle to find a man applying himself to work with the utmost assiduity, in order that his wife may in due form render for him that degree of vicarious leisure which the common sense of the time demands.”
― Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

“La evolución de la sociedad es principalmente un proceso de adaptación mental por parte de los individuos bajo la presión de circunstancias que ya no admiten hábitos de pensamiento formados bajo y conformes a un conjunto diferente de circunstancias en el pasado.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“A medida que la población aumenta en densidad y el grupo depredador se convierte en una comunidad industrial asentada”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“La vida de ocio”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“medida que avanza el desarrollo industrial y la propiedad se concentra en manos de menos personas”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“La vida de un grupo dado se caracterizaría como pacífica mientras el recurso habitual al combate no haya llevado la lucha al primer plano de los pensamientos cotidianos de los hombres”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“En cualquier comunidad donde la propiedad sea común”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“El cambio de actitud espiritual es el resultado de un cambio en los hechos materiales de la vida del grupo”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“Una alteración en la naturaleza humana en un punto determinado implica una alteración en la naturaleza humana en su totalidad.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“La lucha por la riqueza produce una clase subalimentada en grandes proporciones. Esta subalimentación puede manifestarse como una falta de necesidades vitales o de los recursos necesarios para un nivel de vida decente.”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa

“La prescripción termina por hacer que el trabajo no solo sea despreciado a los ojos de la comunidad”
― Thorstein Veblen, Teoría de la clase ociosa