Thorstein Veblen

"Habituation to bargaining and to the competitive principles of business necessarily brings it about that pecuniary standards of efficiency invade the sense of workmanship; so that work, workmen, equip…"

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

"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."

"In the priestly life of all anthropomorphic cults the marks of a vicarious consumption of time are visible."

"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…"

"In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing."

"In modern civilized communities... the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum."

"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."