John Kenneth Galbraith quotes - page 9

Should there be sacrifice, as always in the mature corporation, it is not suffered by those who agree to it. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
Nothing so effectively economizes effort and intelligence, as distinct from anxiety, as the knowledge that nothing can be done. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
We may lay it down as a rule that the older the exercise of any power, the more benign it will appear, and the more recent its assumption, the more unnatural and even dangerous it will seem. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
War remains the decisive human failure. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose. View quote
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)
A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography? View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the first place I identify this ["the equilibrium of poverty"] with primitive agriculture, and two factors have been at work there. One is, of course, population growth. If you were a poor farmer in India, Pakistan, or in much of Africa, you would want as many sons as possible as your social security. They would keep you out of the hot sun and give you some form of subsistence in your old age. So, you have pressure for population growth that is, itself, the result of the extreme economic insecurity. This is something which hasn't been sufficiently emphasized. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The Coolidge Bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
To the man who held stock on margin, disaster had only one face and that was falling prices. But now prices were to be allowed to fall. The speculator's only comfort, henceforth, was that his ruin would be accomplished in an orderly and becoming manner. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
A banker need not be popular; indeed a good banker in a healthy capitalist society should probably be much disliked. People do not wish to trust their money to a hail-fellow-well-met but to a misanthrope who can say no. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Wall Street's crime, in the eyes of its classical enemies, was less its power than its morals. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
I was studying agriculture, how to produce better chickens, better cattle, better horses - horses in those days - better fruit, better vegetables. This was in the early years of the Great Depression, and the thoughts crossed my mind that there wasn't a hell of a lot of use producing better crops and better livestock if you couldn't sell them, that the real problem of agriculture was not efficiency in production but the problem of whether you could make money after you produced the stuff. So I shifted from the technical side to, first, the study of agricultural economic issues and then on to economics itself. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith