Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.

All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.

With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.

The 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.

Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows.

Socialism is a dead horse.

The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.