John Kenneth Galbraith quotes

John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-American economist and public intellectual, renowned for his influential works on economic policy and social criticism. His writings emphasized the dangers of unregulated markets and the importance of government intervention. He shaped economic thought in the 20th century and was an adviser to several U.S. presidents. Here are 257 of his quotes:

Meetings are a great trap. ... they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

John Kenneth Galbraith

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

John Kenneth Galbraith

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

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

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

John Kenneth Galbraith

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

John Kenneth Galbraith

There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

John Kenneth Galbraith

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

John Kenneth Galbraith

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

John Kenneth Galbraith

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.

John Kenneth Galbraith

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.

John Kenneth Galbraith

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

John Kenneth Galbraith