John Kenneth Galbraith quotes - page 2

We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man. View quote
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. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
More die in the United States from too much food that from too little. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
In economics, the majority is always wrong. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Foresight is an imperfect thing - all prevision in economics is imperfect. View quote
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. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplifications of our culture. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
I've long believed alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, the stronger tendency is to converge - that if steel or automobiles are wanted and must be made on a large scale, the process will stamp its imprint on the society, whether that me be Magnitogorsk or Gary, Indiana. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man? View quote
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. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy - what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith