John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.

There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . .

Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.

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.

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.

Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.

Nothing so denies a person liberty as the total absence of money.

One must always have in mind one simple fact - there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor.

When everything else failed, we can still become immortal by making an enormous blunder.

A good rule of conversation is never answer a foolish question.

Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will.

Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell.

According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.

Much of the world's work, it has been said, is done by men who do not feel quite well. Marx is a case in point.

Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

A point must be repeated: only the pathological weakness of the financial memory...allows us to believe that the modern experience of....debt...is in any way a new phenomenon.

The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.

Foresight is an imperfect thing - all prevision in economics is imperfect.

A more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality.

A [New Yorker ] is what it has always been. It combines those who pursue the truth with those who pursue the rewards of orthodoxy and those who pursue what is comfortable to the rich.

It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it.

We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action of the machine we have created to serve us.

The notion that you would initiate a new product without preparing the way by persuasion and advertising and salesmanship is fantastic. It's an integral part of the system.

But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated.

No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic.

Some things were never meant to be recycled.

Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

Economics exists to make astrology look respectable.

When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.

The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.

I would put primary emphasis on a good standard of living equitably distributed. It can't be equal, but one that eliminates the terrible cruelty of poverty.

Happiness does not require an expanding economy

Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?

Economic stimulation that works through the increased outlays to the affluent has, inevitably, an aspect of soundness and sanity that is lacking in expenditure on behalf of the undeserving poor.

Third party politics, at least since La Follette, has always had an element of romance.

If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library.

Unemployment is rarely considered desirable except by those who have not experienced it.

The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years.

There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater.

My rule on honorary degrees has always been to have one more than Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Nothing so weakens government as persistent inflation.

I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.

There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations.

If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.

The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.

The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses.