John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Foresight is an imperfect thing — all prevision in economics is imperfect.

Those involved in mental as opposed to physical effort or who carry the responsibilities of management are presumed to require a higher payment for their submission to the purposes of organization than those who render only physical or manual service, however adept or talented that may be.

This is because there is profound difference in the nature and extent of the submission that is made. The person on the shop floor or its equivalent gives more or less diligent and deft physical effort for a specified number of hours a day. Beyond that nothing in principle — not thought, certainly not conformity of speech or behavior — is expected. Of the high corporate executive a more complete submission to the purposes of the organization is usually required. He (or she) must speak and also think well of the aims of the enterprise; he may never in public and not wisely in private raise doubt as to the depth and sincerity of his own commitment. Many factors determine his large, often very large, compensation, including the need to pay for the years of preparation, for the considerable intelligence that is requires, for the responsibility that is carried, and for the alleged risks of high position. As a practical matter, his rate of pay is also influenced by the significant and highly convenient role the executive plays in establishing it; much that accrues to the senior corporate executive is in response to his own inspired generosity. But there is also payment for the comprehensive submission of his individual personality to that of the corporation. It is no slight thing to give up one's self and self-expression to the collective personality of one's employer.

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.

Let the following be one of the unfailing rules by which the individual investor and, needless to say, the pension and other institutional-fund manager are guided: there is the possibility, even the likelihood, of self-approving and extravagantly error-prone behavior on the part of those closely associated with money. Let that also be the continuing lesson of this essay.

In the really hard cases you're choosing between the disastrous and the catastrophic, and it's hard to tell someone which one is which.

The pioneering instrument of reform was the Bank of England. Of all institutions concerned with economics none has for so long enjoyed such prestige. It is, in all respects, to money as St. Peter's is to Faith.

Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.

In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

More generally, the individual who gets added income as a result of a general inflationary movement atributes it not to larger economic causes but to his own virtue and diligence.

... out of the pecuniary and political pressures and fashions of the time, economics and larger economic and political systems cultivate their own version of the truth. This last has no relation to reality. No one is especially at fault; what is convenient to believe is greatly preferred.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

I can measure the motions of bodies,” Sir Isaac Newton once observed, “but I cannot measure human folly.” Nor could he do so as regards his own. He was to lose

The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.