Quote#Politics & Power
The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his delinquency…
Quote byThorstein Veblen · 1857–1929
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 117.
English (original)
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.
— Thorstein Veblen
More from 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.
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 …
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.
In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.