John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

The members of the functional and socially mobilized under class must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable. There could be a disturbing feeling, however fleeting, of unease, even guilt.

Prices driven up by the expectation that they would go up, the expectation realized by the resulting purchases. Then the inevitable reversal of these expectations because of some seemingly damaging event or development or perhaps merely because the supply of intellectually vulnerable buyers was exhausted.

The first is the extreme brevity of the financial memory. In consequence, financial disaster is quickly forgotten.

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.

dementia to come forward to capture the financial mind. It is also the time generally required for a new generation to enter the scene, impressed, as had been its predecessors, with its own innovative genius.

... 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.

As protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than laws...For protecting people from the cupidity of others and their own, history is highly utilitarian. It sustains memory, and memory serves the same purpose as the SEC, and on the record is far more effective

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich.

The euphoric episode is protected and sustained by the will of those who are involved, in order to justify the circumstances that are making them rich. And it is equally protected by the will to ignore, exorcise, or condemn those who express doubts.

In practice, the individual or individuals at the top of these institutions are often there because, as happens regularly in great organizations, theirs was mentally the most predictable and, in consequence, bureaucratically the least inimical of the contending talent.

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

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

Contributing to and supporting this euphoria are two further factors little noted in our time or in past times. The first is the extreme brevity of the financial memory. ... The second ... is the specious association of money and intelligence.

The assets back of these notes were, it need hardly be said, minuscule and evanescent. Leverage once again.

Le verità lapalissiane dell'economia non hanno verità scopritori; esse sono evidenti a chiunque abbia occhi per vedere.