John Galbraith Economist Quotes & Sayings

Capitalist production does not exist at all without foreign commerce. — Karl Marx

Good women don't reform bad men, they only irritate them. — Talbot Mundy

Douglas Carswell accused all political parties of "deliberately cultivating the impression" that there would be a referendum. — Douglas Carswell

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

There are four varieties in society - the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest. — Hippolyte Taine

Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences ... In my view, the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding. — Bertolt Brecht

Jews are known for many things, but strength, swiftness, and agility are not among them. There is one trait, as controversial as it is familiar, for which Jews are above all known, and that is shrewdness in business. — Steven Pinker

Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist - in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to be one, and that's what I did. — Haruki Murakami

If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality. — Seneca.

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

My employer uses twenty-six years of my life for every year I get to keep. And what do I get in return for the enormous thing I am giving? What do I get in return for my life? — Michael Ventura

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

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

When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages. — Richard Whately

If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits. — Carl Von Clausewitz

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

I always overwrite - really awful, long bits of script - and then I trim it down to the bare bones and then add a little bit to colour it in. At the end of all of my stories, I test for wordless comprehension. So I remove the text and see if it works by itself. And if it does, I feel that that's a successful story. — Shaun Tan

A sceptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. "Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know." — Arthur Helps

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