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

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

Invention is the mother of necessity.
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

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

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

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