Thorstein Veblen Quotes

The chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay.

A civilization which is dominated by this matter-of-fact insight must prevail against any cultural scheme that lacks this element. This characteristic of western civilization comes to a head in modern science, and finds its highest material expression in the technology of the machine industry.

Habituation to bargaining and to the competitive principles of business necessarily brings it about that pecuniary standards of efficiency invade (contaminate) the sense of workmanship; so that work, workmen, equipment and products come to be rated on a scale of money values, which has only a circuitous and often only a putative relation to their workmanlike efficiency or their serviceability. Those occupations and those aptitudes that yield good returns in terms of price are reputed valuable and commendable, — the accepted test of success, and even of serviceability, being the gains acquired. Workmanship comes to be confused with salesmanship, until tact, effrontery and prevarication have come to serve as a standard of efficiency, and unearned gain is accepted as the measure of productiveness.

The machine process pervades the modern life and dominates it in a mechanical sense. Its dominance is seen in the enforcement of precise mechanical measurements and adjustment and the reduction of all manner of things, purposes and acts, necessities, conveniences, and amenities of life, to standard units.

In common with other men, the business man is moved by ideals of serviceability and an aspiration to make the way of life easier for his fellows... Motives of this kind detract from business efficiency, and an undue yielding to them on the part of business men is to be deprecated as an infirmity. Still, throughout men's dealings with one another and with the interests of the community there runs a sense of equity, fair dealing, and workmanlike integrity.

Without much preliminary exposition and without feeling himself to be out of touch with his contemporaries, Darwin set to work to explain species in terms of the process out of which they have arisen, rather than out of the prime cause to which the distinction between them may he due.

The need of conspicuous waste... stands ready to absorb any increase in the community's industrial efficiency or output of goods.

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.

It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessary of life.

The periodical press is not only a purveyor of news, opinions, and admonitions; it also supplies the greater part of the literature currently read. ...The standards of excellence that govern this periodical literature... must in no way hamper the purposes of the advertisers. ...Taken in the aggregate, the literary output is designed to meet the tastes of that large body of people who are in the habit of buying freely. The successful magazine writers... follow the taste of the class to whom they speak... They must also conform to the fancies and prejudices of this class as regards the ideals—artistic, moral, religious, or social—for which they speak. The class... is that great body of people who are in moderately easy circumstances... the respectable middle class... of various shades of conservatism, affectation, and snobbery.

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.

It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community.

It is much more difficult to recede from a scale of expenditure once adopted than it is to extend the accustomed scale in response to an accession of wealth.

Any evolutionary science... is a close-knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence... of cumulative causation. The great deserts of the evolutionist leaders... lie... in their having shown how this colorless impersonal sequence of cause and effect can be made use of for theory proper, by virtue of its cumulative character.