In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing.
Thorstein VeblenThe visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
Thorstein VeblenThe basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
Thorstein VeblenAbstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.
Thorstein Veblen