John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
-
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.
-
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-
The present age of contentment will come to an end only when and if the adverse developments that it fosters challenge the sense of comfortable well-being,
-
Power is as power does.
-
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.
-
The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.
-
Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.
-
A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.
-
Marx profoundly affected those who did not accept his system. His influence extended to those who least supposed they were subject to it.
-
The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.
-
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
-
But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.
-
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
-
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
-
It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.
-
SOME YEARS, like some poets,and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year.
-
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.
-
Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-
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.
-
We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?
-
It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.
-
While it will be desirable to achieve planned results, it will be even more important to avoid unplanned disasters.
-
We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.
-
Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell.