Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
Thorstein VeblenRead
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Serious research leads to more questions, expanding our understanding rather than providing definitive answers.
Thorstein Veblen's quote emphasizes the nature of serious research as a process that deepens inquiry. Rather than simply answering questions, effective research generates additional questions, highlighting the complexities and layers of knowledge in any field. This reflects the idea that exploration and curiosity are fundamental to intellectual growth and scientific advancement.
Themes
ResearchQuestionsInquiryKnowledgeCuriosity
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on the scientific method, you might reference this quote to illustrate the importance of inquiry.
More from Thorstein Veblen
All quotes βIn 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.
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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.
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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.
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In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
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Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
Thorstein VeblenRead
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