John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

The traveler to the United States will do well, however, 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.

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process. However, a more 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.

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.

But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.

No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousandshares ofGeneral Motors or General Electric.

Nothing in our time is more interesting than the erstwhile capitalist corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under the imperatives of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members.

Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.

THE GENIUS of the industrial system lies in its organized use of capital and technology. This is made possible, as we have duly seen, by extensively replacing the market with planning.

All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.

A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.

Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.

If a man be subject to the authority of another, he can at least ask that it not be an occasion for glee.

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.

One of the small but rewarding vocations of a free society is the provision of needed conclusions, properly supported by statistics and moral indignation, for those in a position to pay for them.