John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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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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The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.
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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.
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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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All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
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By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
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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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Nothing in our time is more interesting than the erstwhile capitalist corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under the imperatives of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members.
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Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
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Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.
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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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He enlarged perceptibly the scope for debate, liberalized appreciably the intellectual and cultural life of the country and proclaimed the obvious truth that, after an atomic exchange, little would distinguish the Communist ashes from the capitalist ashes.
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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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We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
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Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
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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.
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Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.
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In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
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Wall Street's crime, in the eyes of its classical enemies, was less its power than its morals.
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Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.
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If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
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THE GENIUS of the industrial system lies in its organized use of capital and technology. This is made possible, as we have duly seen, by extensively replacing the market with planning.
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Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.