John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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Foresight is an imperfect thing - all prevision in economics is imperfect.
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Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result.
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One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.
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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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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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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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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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Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage.
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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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Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?
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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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Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground.
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The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.
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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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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 Coolidge Bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.