John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.
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To a few alarmed observers it seemed as though Wall Street were by way of devouring all the money of the entire world. However, in accordance with the cultural practice, as the summer passed, the sound and responsible spokesmen decried not the increase in brokers' loans, but those who insisted on attaching significance to this trend.
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The massive reduction in risk that is inherent in the development of the modern corporation has been far from fully appreciated.
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When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.
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Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
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Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences.
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There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
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In 1929 the discovery of the wonders of the geometric series struck Wall Street with a force comparable to the invention of the wheel.
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Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
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In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism.
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In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
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The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.
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To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise.
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There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.
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With the American failure came world failure.
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Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.
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Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
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The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the US is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.
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You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.
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Our political tradition sets great store by the generalized symbol of evil. This is the wrongdoer whose wrongdoing will be taken by the public to be the secret propensity of a whole community or class.
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In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
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In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.
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At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean.
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Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.