John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes & Sayings

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

Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistent — John Kenneth Galbraith

Galbraith's First Law: Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks. — John Kenneth Galbraith

At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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

In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will. — John Kenneth Galbraith

We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The ideas by which people ... interpret their existence and in measure guide their behavior, were not forged in a world of wealth. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Happiness does not require an expanding economy — John Kenneth Galbraith

Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don't know, and those who don't know they don't know. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced. — Anthony Burgess

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

In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Leverage was magnificently available, — John Kenneth Galbraith

If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I think without a doubt, that what is called "financial genius" is merely a rising market. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little — John Kenneth Galbraith

Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the world of minor lunacy, the behavior of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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

In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. — John Kenneth Galbraith

With the American failure came world failure. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable? — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding — John Kenneth Galbraith

If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I have never understood why one's affections must be confined, as once with women, to a single country. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness. — John Kenneth Galbraith

All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman. — George Stigler

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

Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money — John Kenneth Galbraith

Wisdom ... is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion. — John Kenneth Galbraith

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The massive reduction in risk that is inherent in the development of the modern corporation has been far from fully appreciated. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Milton Friedman's misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried. — John Kenneth Galbraith

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics). — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Foreign policy is conducted for the convenience and enjoyment of people in Washington. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The spirit should never grow old. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Few things are as immutable as the addiction of political groups to the ideas by whichthey have once won office. — John Kenneth Galbraith

But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics is not an exact science. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The first goal of the technostructure is its own security. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I think the role of the Federal Reserve is enormously exaggerated. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Unemployment is rarely considered desirable except by those who have not experienced it. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it by consuming its products. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Only foolish people are completely secure. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, the majority is always wrong. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is possible that people need to believe they are unmanaged if they are to be managed effectively. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Genius is a rising stock market. — John Kenneth Galbraith

No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience. — John Kenneth Galbraith