John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
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Economics is not an exact science.
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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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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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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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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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We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
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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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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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If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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However, Hoover had converted the simple business ritual of reassurance into a major instrument of public policy.
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Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.
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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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In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
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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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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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Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority.
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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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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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Wall Street's crime, in the eyes of its classical enemies, was less its power than its morals.
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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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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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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.