A Quote by Thorstein Veblen

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. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.

Thorstein Veblen

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Alert Civilized Communities Community Conspicuous Economic Emulation Equivalent Exception Expresses Far Form Industrial Instinct Itself Most Motives Persistent Present Preservation Propensity Proper Regards Saying Self Self-Preservation Some Strongest Virtually Waste Western

Quote Author

Thorstein Veblen
American - Economist
July 30, 1857 - August 3, 1929

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.

Thorstein Veblen

Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.

Honore de Balzac

One cannot conquer the evil in himself by resisting it ... but by transmuting its energies into other forms. The energy that expresses itself in the form of evil is the same energy which expresses itself in the form of good; and thus the one may be transmuted into the other.

Charles Henry Mackintosh

Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.

Friedrich Nietzsche

When you introduce into our schools a spirit of emulation, you have present the keenest spur admissible to the youthful intellect.

Horace Mann

Emulation, even in brutes, is sensitively "nervous." See the tremor of the thoroughbred racer before he starts. The dray-horse does not tremble, but he does not emulate. It is not his work to run a race. Says Marcus Antoninus, "It is all one to a stone whether it be thrown upward or downward." Yet the emulation of a man of genius is seldom with his contemporaries, that is, inwardly in his mind, although outwardly in his act it would seem so. The competitors with whom his secret ambition seems to vie are the dead.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Keynesian modelling relies on marginal propensity to consume and marginal propensity to invest. The idea that if we give more money to the poor, they have a propensity to consume that's much higher than the wealthy, though I wish they would talk to my wife about that; she seems to have a propensity to consume.

Myron Scholes

Strauss admits to being obsessed by his mother's rejection, and with the resultant rents in self-esteem. The Game echoes with disturbingly abusive comments leveled at his adolescent self, a self he feels was unacceptable. With bravado, he expresses regret that he didn't rack up more sexual conquests in his teens; in person, he expresses a truer regret that he was intimidated by life itself.

Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.

Walter Lippmann

When emulation leads us to strive for self-elevation by merit alone, and not by belittling another, then it is one of the grandest possible incentives to action.

Samuel Johnson

I'm into emulation, not imitation.

Chuck Inglish

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.

Thorstein Veblen

In all these products, whether iron bridges, locomotives, automobiles, telescopes, cottages, airport-hangars, funicular railways, skyscrapers, or children's toys, the will towards a new style expresses itself. The similarity of these examples to the new creations in art consists in the same striving for clear, pure form which expresses truth in the objects.