John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.
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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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It was in World War I that the age-old certainties were lost. Until then aristocrats and capitalists felt secure in their position, and even socialists felt certain in their faith. It was never to be so again. The Age of Uncertainty began.
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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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War remains the decisive human failure.
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All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
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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 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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Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
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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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If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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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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Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.
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Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
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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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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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The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
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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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Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority.
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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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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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Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.
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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.