John Galbraith Quotes (39 Quotes)

Several times I concluded that there was too much detail always I returned to continue and enjoy the book.

When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.

In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less

If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.

The traveler to the United States will do well to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.

If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves

What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, for increasing sensual pleasure and enhancing caloric intake above any conceivable nutritional requirement

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.

On the first of January of 1929, as a simple matter of probability, it was most likely that the boom would end before the year was out, ... The market wouldn't level out it would fall precipitately.

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.

One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.

There must be, most of all, an effective safety net of individual and family support for those who live on the lower edges of the system.

In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistent

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

It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.

these are the days when men... seek the comfortable and the accepted when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence when originality is taken to be a mark of instability and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will

There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and im

Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will.

We are on the edge of a total end to civilized existenceon this planet, perhaps the end of life itself.

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

Wisdom itself is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion

One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.

The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

Once the visitor was told rather repetitively that this city was the melting pot never before in history had so many people of such varied languages, customs, colors and culinary habits lived so amicably together. Although New York remains peaceful by most standards, this self-congratulation is now less often heard, since it was discovered some years ago that racial harmony depended unduly on the willingness of the blacks (and latterly the Puerto Ricans) to do for the other races the meanest jobs at the lowest wages and then to return to live by themselves in the worst slums.

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

a much more concerned look at the problems of the weak economies, particularly the innocent people that are suffering there.

The happiest time in any man's life is just after the first divorce

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.

It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved

Any consideration of the life and larger social existence of the modern corporate man begins and also largely ends with the effect of one all-embracing force. That is organization -- the highly structured assemblage of men, and now some women, of which he is a part. It is to this, at the expense of family, friends, sex, recreation and sometimes health and effective control of alcoholic intake, that he is expected to devote his energies.

Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity

We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.

Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding.

An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.

Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital he serves it by consuming its products