John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
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In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
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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.
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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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War remains the decisive human failure.
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All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.
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There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
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Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
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All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
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The traveler to the United States will do well, however, to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.
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Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority.
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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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Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.
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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.
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If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.
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The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
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It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
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The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.
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Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
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It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
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Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.
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Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.
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Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.