John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

One of the uses of depression is the exposure of what auditors fail to find.

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

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.

This map by cartographer Herman Moll was commissioned by the South Sea Company. The entire region displayed, with the exception of Brazil, was claimed as the company’s trading territory. Disregarded was the fact that Spain claimed the same territory.

It was usually on about the fourth day that I put in that note of spontaneity for which I am known.

It is a well-established, though perhaps somewhat transparent, technique of argument, on encountering something which cannot easily be reconciled with preferred belief, to point to the exceptions. What does not invariably exist is then held not to exit.

Even the economist, who most takes for granted the primacy of pecuniary motivation, looks askance at the colleague who is too avid for consulting fees from corporations or textbook revenues or travel at the expense of the Ford Foundation. Academic courtesy may require that he refrain from first-person comment but duty dictates that he be vigorously critical of the transgressor when the latter is absent.

He enlarged perceptibly the scope for debate, liberalized appreciably the intellectual and cultural life of the country and proclaimed the obvious truth that, after an atomic exchange, little would distinguish the Communist ashes from the capitalist ashes.

Get the process of negotiation away from the small specialized group that some people have called the "nuclear theologians," who in effect said this is a complicated issue of seeing how little we can give away, how much we can extract from the other side; it's highly specialized. Only a few people can understand the nature of these weapons, the delivery systems, the targeting, the nature of the MIRV and the CRUISE, on down, and the MX. This kept the whole discussion to a very limited group of people who, in a way, had assumed responsibility for saying whether we should live or die.

Excessive acreages of unused buildings, commercial and residential were created. The need for such construction, given the space demands of modern business bureaucracy, was believed to be without limit. In later consequence, the solvency of numerous banks, including that of some of the nation's largest and most prestigious institutions, was either fatally impaired or placed in doubt. The lending of both those that failed or were endangered and others was subject, by fear and example to curtailment. The construction industry was severely constrained and its workers left unemployed. A general recession ensued. Any early warning as to what was happening would have been exceptionally ill received, seen as yet another invasion of the benign rule of laissez faire and a specific interference with the market. However in keeping with the exceptions to this rule, there would be eventual salvation in a government bailout of the banks. Insurance of bank deposits — a far from slight contribution to contentment — was permissible, as well as assurance that were a bank large enough, it would not be allowed to fail. A preventive role by government was not allowed; eventual government rescue was highly acceptable.

Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.

That economics has a considerable conceptual apparatus with an appropriate terminology can not be a serious ground for complaint. Economic phenomena, ideas, instruments of analysis exist. They require names. Education in economics is, in considerable measure, an introduction to this terminology and to the ideas that it denotes. Anyone who has difficulties with the ideas should complete his education or, following an exceedingly well-beaten path, leave the subject alone. It is sometimes said that the economist has a special obligation to make himself understood because his subject is of such great and popular importance. By this rule the nuclear physicist would have to speak in monosyllables.

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

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.

Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.