John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
-
While it will be desirable to achieve planned results, it will be even more important to avoid unplanned disasters.
-
Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest.
-
But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.
-
Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego. It is well no doubt, to reflect on how much one owes to others.
-
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.
-
One must always have in mind one simple fact - there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people.
-
When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble - until the day of disaster.
-
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.
-
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
-
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.
-
A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.
-
We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.
-
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
-
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
-
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-
In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand; the spiral operates when there is too much and also,unfortunately, when there is just enough.
-
The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles.