John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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I never enjoyed writing a book more; indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.
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You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
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Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.
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If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement.
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Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.
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No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousand shares of General Motors or General Electric.
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Those who yearn for the end of capitalism should pray for government by men who believe that all positive action is inimical to what they call thoughtfully the fundamental principles of free enterprise.
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And after they have started the action will always look, as it did to the frightened men in the Federal Reserve Board in February 1929, like a decision in favor of immediate as against ultimate death. As we have seen, the immediate death not only has the disadvantage of being immediate but of identifying the executioner.
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But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.
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The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
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Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.
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The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.
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Marx profoundly affected those who did not accept his system. His influence extended to those who least supposed they were subject to it.
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The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
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In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
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The pioneering instrument of reform was the Bank of England. Of all institutions concerned with economics none has for so long enjoyed such prestige. It is, in all respects, to money as St. Peter's is to Faith.
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There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.
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A nuclear war does not defend a country and it does not defend a system. I've put it the same way many times; not even the most accomplished ideologue will be able to tell the difference between the ashes of capitalism and the ashes of communism.
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We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
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In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.
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In the early days of the crash it was widely believed that Jesse L. Livermore, a Bostonian with a large and unquestionably exaggerated reputation for bear operations, leading a syndicate that was driving the market down.
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We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.
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It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.