“In the modern industrial communities… the apparatus of living has grown so elaborate and cumbrous… that the consumers of these things cannot make way with them in the required manner without help.”

— Thorstein Veblen , book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 65-66

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the modern industrial communities… the apparatus of living has grown so elaborate and cumbrous… that the consumers o…" by Thorstein Veblen?

Thorstein Veblen 41

American academic 1857–1929

Related quotes

“In my opinion, it is the industry concerned which should have the chief say in the question of the amount of theoretical training required. It is the industry which uses the products of the schools, and, like every consumer, it has the right to make its wishes known.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 909

“Primordial communities of bacteria were elaborately interwoven by communication links. …These turned a colony into a collective processor… The resulting learning machine was so ingenious that Eshel Ben-Jacob has called its modern bacterial counterpart a "creative web."”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Source: Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (2000), Ch.1 Creative Nets in the Precambrian Era

“In a statesman’s transactions there are many things which cannot be communicated otherwise than by manner without inconvenient commitment or controversy; and that will be the most serviceable manner which can be expressive or inexpressive at pleasure, and be used as a dark lantern to his meanings.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 31. p. 235

“A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion — in Schiller's words a tyrant.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Ein Mensch wie ich kann ohne Steckenpferd, ohne herrschende Leidenschaften, ohne einen Tyrannen in Schillers Worten, nicht leben. Ich habe meinen Tyrannen gefunden und in seinem Dienst kenne ich kein Maß.
Letter to Wilhelm Fliess (1895), as quoted in Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences Vol 3-4 (1967) p. 159
1890s
Context: A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion — in Schiller's words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant, and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology. it has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now since I have hit upon the neuroses, it has come so much the nearer.

“The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

“If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure.”

Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire

From a speech regarding the morality laws of Lex Julia. Livy's account states the speech was plagiarized by Augustus from another by Q. Metellus (Periochae 59.9). A fragment of this original speech (quoted) is preserved by A. Gellius (Noctes Atticae 1.6).
Original: (la) Si sine uxore pati possemus, Quirites, omnes ea molestia careremus; set quoniam ita natura tradidit, ut nec cum illis satis commode, nec sine illis ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuae potius quam brevi voluptati consulendum est.
Source: [http://www.unrv.com/government/julianmarri

“The communication of modern science to the ordinary citizen, necessary, important, desirable as it is, cannot be considered an easy task. The prime obstacle is lack of education. … There is also the difficulty of making scientific discoveries interesting and exciting without completely degrading them intellectually. … It is a weakness of modern science that the scientist shrinks from this sort of publicity, and thus gives an impression of arrogant mystagoguery.”

John Ziman (1925–2005) New Zealand physicist

[John M. Ziman, The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society, Cambridge University Press, 1976, 0-521-09917-X, 119]

“As fish cannot live without water, so guerrillas cannot live without the people.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

With the century, vol. 5

“Leisure moments: each life well regulated has some such intervals, and he who cannot make way for them does not know how to live.”

Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian

Des moments libres. Toute vie bien réglée a les siens, et qui ne sait pas les provoquer ne sait pas vivre.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 43

“In the entire world, there is not a single establishment of the security industry that is not based on monopoly or on communism. […] Political economy has disapproved equally of monopoly and communism in the various branches of human activity, wherever it has found them. Is it not then strange and unreasonable that it accepts them in the security industry?”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 27–28

“In the modern industrial communities… the apparatus of living has grown so elaborate and cumbrous… that the consumers of these things cannot make way with them in the required manner without help.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Thorstein Veblen 41

Related quotes

Related topics