John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

It takes a certain brashness to attack the accepted economic legendsbut noneat all toperpetuatethem. So theyare perpetuated.

Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.

The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.

It is the good fortune of the affluent country that the opportunity cost of economic discussion is low and hence it can afford all kinds.

Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards.

Genius is a rising stock market.

However, it is safe to say that at the peak in 1929 the number of active speculators was less - and probably was much less - than a million.

In a world where for pedagogic and other purposes a very large number of economists is required, an arrangement which discourages many of them from

I never enjoyed writing a book more; indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.

The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.

We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.

Clerks in downtown hotels were said to be asking guests whether they wished the room for sleeping or jumping. Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account.

But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.

Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.

Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.

The present age of contentment will come to an end only when and if the adverse developments that it fosters challenge the sense of comfortable well-being

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.

The fully planned economy, so far from being unpopular, is warmly regarded by those who know it best.

Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply.

In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistent

Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences.

In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought.

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.

Men will look back in amusement at the pretence that once caused people to refer to General Dynamics and North American Aviation and AT&T as private business.

In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole.

If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement.

Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do.

Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.

No hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food.

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed. In the absence of new developments, old ones may seem very impressive for quite a long while.

Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money

The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant.

Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.

To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise.

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.

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.

One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.

American university presidents are a nervous breed; I have never thought well of them as a class.

Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.

Emancipation of belief is the most formidable of the tasks of reform and the one on which all else depends.

The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.

Power is as power does.

No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousand shares of General Motors or General Electric.

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.

SOME YEARS, like some poets,and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year.

No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.

One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.

Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad.

Perhaps never before or since have so many people taken the measure of economic prospects and found them so favorable as in the two days following the Thursday [24th October 1929] disaster.