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The addiction to sports ... marks an arrested development of the man's moral nature.

— Thorstein Veblen The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

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More quotes by Thorstein Veblen

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

Veblen (1908)

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.

The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

The chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay.

The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community.

Absentee Ownership (1923)

All Thorstein Veblen quotes →

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Many more people in the world are concerned with sports than with human rights.

Samuel P. Huntington The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order (1997)

When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

Michel de Montaigne Essais (1571)

By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd;
The sports of children satisfy the child.

Oliver Goldsmith The Traveller (1764)

The shame is not in having sported, but in not having broken off the sport.

Horace

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thorstein Veblen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.