Kenneth Galbraith Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Kenneth Galbraith

Kenneth Galbraith Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Kenneth Galbraith quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

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