John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority.
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Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.
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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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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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There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
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The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
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Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.
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No one knew, but it cannot be stressed too frequently, that for effective incantation knowledge is neither necessary nor assumed.
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Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?
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Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.
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One of the uses of depression is the exposure of what auditors fail to find.
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There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.
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In economics, the majority is always wrong.
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Conscience is better served by a myth.
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The advisers and counselors were not, however, analyzing the danger or even the possibility. They were serving only as the custodians of bad memories.
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Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.
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In accordance with an old but not outworn tradition, it might now be wise for all to conclude that crime, or even misbehavior, is the act of an individual, not the predisposition of a class.
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Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
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Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.
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A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.