John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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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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A constant in the history of money is that every remedy is reliably a source of new abuse.
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Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.
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In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole.
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Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.
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Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?
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All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
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It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.
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Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
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What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve.
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To the man who held stock on margin, disaster had only one face and that was falling prices. But now prices were to be allowed to fall. The speculator's only comfort, henceforth, was that his ruin would be accomplished in an orderly and becoming manner.
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The myth that holds that the great corporation is the puppet of the market, the powerless servant of the consumer, is, in fact one of the devices by which its power is perpetuated.
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The Coolidge Bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.
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Hitler also anticipated modern economic policy . . . by recognizing that a rapid approach to full employment was only possible if it was combined with wage and price controls. That a nation oppressed by economic fear would respond to Hitler as Americans did to F.D.R. is not surprising.
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The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant.
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If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.
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The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.
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In 1736, Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette printed an apology for its irregular appearence because its printer was 'with the Press, labouring for the publick Good, to make Money more plentiful.' The press was busy printing money.
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It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the disturbing voices of doubt be muted and that there be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence.
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Our political life favors the extremes of speech; the man who is gifted in the arts of abuse is bound to be a notable, if not always a great figure.
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Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.
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One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
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A banker need not be popular; indeed a good banker in a healthy capitalist society should probably be much disliked. People do not wish to trust their money to a hail-fellow-well-met but to a misanthrope who can say no.
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But there is still a considerable difference between a failure to do enough that is right and a determination to do much that is wrong.