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However, it is safe to say that at the peak in 1929 the number of active speculators was less - and probably was much less - than a million.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
I've long believed alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, the stronger tendency is to converge - that if steel or automobiles are wanted and must be made on a large scale, the process will stamp its imprint on the society, whether that me be Magnitogorsk or Gary, Indiana.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Clerks in downtown hotels were said to be asking guests whether they wished the room for sleeping or jumping. Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
It is in the long run that the corporation lives.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?
John Kenneth Galbraith -
The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
War remains the decisive human failure.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
The values of a society totally preoccupied with making money are not altogether reassuring.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
Economics is not an exact science.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM requires that prices be under effective control. And it seeks the greatest possible influence over what buyers take at the established prices.
John Kenneth Galbraith -
That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplifications of our culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith