Galbraith Economist Quotes & Sayings

There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are. — John Kenneth Galbraith

All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman. — George Stigler

Today, the Power Elite is more geographically concentrated in specific areas. Economist Jamie Galbraith found that if you measured inequality across counties in the United States in the 1990s, half the rise occurred in 5 counties out of 3,150: New York, New York; King County, Washington; and San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Mateo in Northern California.24 — Christopher L. Hayes