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Veblen asked too many questions, suffered from a constitutional inability to say yes.
Socrates asked questions, drank down the bitter drink one night when the first cock crowed,
but Veblen
drank it in little sips through a long life in the stuffiness of classrooms, the dust of libraries, the staleness of cheap flats such as a poor instructor can afford. He fought the bogy all right, pedantry, routine, timeservers at office desks, trustees, collegepresidents, the plump flunkies of the ruling businessmen, all the good jobs kept for yesmen, never enough money, every broadening hope thwarted. Veblen drank the bitter drink all right.
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