Thorstein Veblen

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

"Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure."

"The idle curiosity is not so often a mark of the human female as of the male."

"Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew."

"The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development in the economic stage called the quasi-peaceable stage of industry."

"The good of the community is inseparable from the good of the individual."

"Invention is the mother of necessity."

"The most serviceable of man's possessions in the effort to live is his faculty for unlearning."

"All science is human, and therefore all science is limited by human capacities and insight."

"Machine industry requires that the work be carried on under a rigorous discipline."

"Emulation is the effort to equal or exceed another in some achievement."

"The baseline of truth is not sentiment but facts."

"It is the unlearned, not the learned, that uses up most of the economic energy of society."

"Beauty is a force that flows through the world and cannot be measured."

"Man's instinct of workmanship serves him as a guide in matters of aesthetic propriety."

"The prosperity of a community is proportional to the degree in which the community fosters the growth of knowledge and the application of knowledge to practical affairs."

"Modern warfare is a contest of scientific achievement."

"The accumulation of wealth at the upper levels of society is a normal feature of any industrial community."

"The instinct of the craftsman remains one of the most potent human forces."

"Culture is not a tabula rasa upon which anything may be written."

"Habits of thought become habits of life."

"The most prominent object of university discipline has ever been the repression of knowledge."

"Predatory culture fosters a more warlike bent than productive industry."

"The leisure class stands at the apex of the social structure."

"Economic freedom rests on the possession of capital."

"The human race has always moved forward through the efforts of those unafraid to question."

"Time is the substance of which I am made."

"The future rewards those who work toward it."

"Waste is a constant feature of modern capitalist society."

"The basis of community life is mutual respect and trust."