John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

The process by which money is created is so simply that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent.

There is nothing in economic life so willfully misunderstood as the great speculative episode. T

Recurrent speculative insanity and the associated financial deprivation and larger devastation are, i am persuaded, inherent in the system. Perhaps it is better that this be recognized and accepted.

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

Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego. It is well no doubt, to reflect on how much one owes to others.

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it becameNew York, London or Tokyo.

The only remedy, in fact, is an enhanced skepticism that would resolutely associate too evident optimism with probable foolishness and that would not associate intelligence with the acquisition, the deployment, or, for that matter, the administration of large sums of money.

The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant.

Speculation, it has been noted, comes when popular imagination settles on something seemingly new in the field of commerce or finance.

Power is as power does.

The crash in 1929, however, did have one therapeutic effect: it, somewhat exceptionally, lingered in the financial memory. For the next quarter of a century securities markets were generally orderly and dull. Although this mood lasted longer than usual, financial history was not at an end. The commitment to Schumpeter’s mania was soon to be reasserted.

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.

Our political tradition sets great store by the generalized symbol of evil. This is the wrongdoer whose wrongdoing will be taken by the public to be the secret propensity of a whole community or class.

It was in World War I that the age-old certainties were lost. Until then aristocrats and capitalists felt secure in their position, and even socialists felt certain in their faith. It was never to be so again. The Age of Uncertainty began.

There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.