The consequences of successful action seemed almost as terrible as the consequences of inaction, and they could be more horrible for those who took t… - John Kenneth Galbraith

If he suspects that economics, as it is conventionally taught, is, in part, a system of belief designed less to reveal truth than to reassure students and other communicants as to the benign tendency of established social arrangements, he will also be right.

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.

People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development — the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example — they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.