John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
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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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I talked about the consolidation of power in the hands of the corporate bureaucracy, as distinct from the stockholders. To this view, I still strongly adhere.
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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.
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The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.
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Even in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many man in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them.
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Had the Bible been in clear straightforward language, had the ambiguities and contradictions been edited out, and had the language been constantly modernised to accord with contemporary taste it would almost certainly have been, or become, a work of lesser influence.
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Banking may well be a career from which no man really recovers.
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Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply.
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In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistent
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I've been a faithful reader of the great classical documents of economics, or tried to be.
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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 miserable consumption of the poor is partly the result of the ostentatious demands of the rich. There isn't enough for both, and the latter get far more than they need...But could anything seriously be done about it?
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In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.
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Only foolish people are completely secure.
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For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last.
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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.
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In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.
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Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
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Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future.
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Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.
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In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.
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We're all subject to the daily pressures of consumer persuasion.
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If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.
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The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware.
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Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
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With the American failure came world failure.
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Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.
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We talk of the enormous virtues of work, but it turns out that that is mostly for the poor. If you're rich enough or if you're a college professor, the virtue lies in leisure and the use you make of your leisure time.
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The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.
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In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
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John F. Kennedy 35th U.S. President -
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John Maynard Keynes Economist -
David Ricardo Economist -
Robert Heilbroner Economist -
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