Quote#Wisdom
The latter-day outcome of this evolution of an archaic institution,…
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. 83.
English (original)
The latter-day outcome of this evolution of an archaic institution, the wife, who was at the outset the drudge and chattel of the man... has become the ceremonial consumer of goods which he produces. But she still quite unmistakably remains his chattel in theory; for the habitual rendering of vicarious leisure and consumption is the abiding mark of the unfree servant.
— Thorstein Veblen
More from Thorstein Veblen
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 …
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.
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
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 itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.