John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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Power is as power does.
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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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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.
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Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
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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.
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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.
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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 numerous years following the war the Federal government ran a heavy surplus. It could not pay off it's debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.
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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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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.
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Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
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The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
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We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
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A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.
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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.
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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.
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People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
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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.
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Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?
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The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
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It is in the long run that the corporation lives.
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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.