Kenneth Galbraith Quotes & Sayings

Broadly speaking, Keynesianism means that the government has a specific responsibility for the behavior of the economy, that it doesn't work on its own autonomous course, but the government, when there's a recession, compensates by employment, by expansion of purchasing power, and in boom times corrects by being a restraining force. But it controls the great flow of demand into the economy, what since Keynesian times has been the flow of aggregate demand. That was the basic idea of Keynes so far as one can put it in a couple of sentences. — John Kenneth Galbraith

From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego. — John Kenneth Galbraith

One must always have in mind one simple fact - there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I would put primary emphasis on a good standard of living equitably distributed. It can't be equal, but one that eliminates the terrible cruelty of poverty. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction. — John Kenneth Galbraith

That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I've long believed alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, the stronger tendency is to converge - that if steel or automobiles are wanted and must be made on a large scale, the process will stamp its imprint on the society, whether that me be Magnitogorsk or Gary, Indiana. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people. — John Kenneth Galbraith

At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof. — John Kenneth Galbraith

No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that create the wants. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Under capitalism, man exploits man; while under socialism just the reverse is true. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Change comes not from men and women changing their minds, but from the change from one generation to the next. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, and the schools so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspectionand interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Recurrent descent into insanity is not a wholly attractive feature of capitalism. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

The spirit should never grow old. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is. — John Kenneth Galbraith

No hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is in the long run that the corporation lives. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Of late I have searched diligently to discover the advantages of age, and there is, I have concluded, only one. It is that lovely women treat your approaches with understanding rather than with disdain. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I would now, however, more strongly emphasize, and especially as to the United States, the inequality in income and that it is getting worse - that the poor remain poor and the command of income by those in the top income brackets is increasing egregiously. So is the political eloquence and power by which that income is defended. This I did not foresee. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat. — John Kenneth Galbraith

War remains the decisive human failure. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I can't resist telling you that when the Vienna Economics Institute celebrated its centennial, many years ago, they invited, as their keynote speaker, my father [John Kenneth Galbraith]. The leading economists of the Austrian school- including von Hayek and von Haberler - returned for the occasion. And so my father took a moment to reflect on the economic triumphs of the Austrian Republic since the war, which, he said, "would not have been possible without the contribution of these men." They nodded - briefly - until it dawned on them what he meant. They'd all left the country in the 1930s. — James K. Galbraith

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is
not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth.
Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great
a little understood
thing. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economic stimulation that works through the increased outlays to the affluent has, inevitably, an aspect of soundness and sanity that is lacking in expenditure on behalf of the undeserving poor. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A good rule of conversation is never answer a foolish question. — John Kenneth Galbraith

These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Every corner of the public psyche is canvassed by some of the most talented citizens to see if the desire for some merchandisable product can be cultivated. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Galbraith's First Law: Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue. — John Kenneth Galbraith

With the American failure came world failure. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Nothing so weakens a government as inflation. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If anything is evident about people who manage money, it is that the task attracts a very low level of talent, one that is protected in its highly imperfect profession by the mystery that is thought to enfold the subject of economics in general and of money in particular. — John Kenneth Galbraith

When everything else failed, we can still become immortal by making an enormous blunder ... — John Kenneth Galbraith

The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future. — 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

The process by which wants are now synthesized is a potential source of economic instability. Production and therewith employment and social security are dependent on an inherently unstable process of consumer debt creation. This may one day falter. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Over the span of man's history, although a phenomenal amount of education, persuasion, indoctrination and incantation have been devoted to the effort, ordinary people have never been quite persuaded that toil is as agreeable as its alternatives. Thus to take increased well-being partly in the form of more goods and partly in the form of more leisure is unquestionably rational. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The fully planned economy, so far from being unpopular, is warmly regarded by those who know it best. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In public administration good sense would seem to require the public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize the eventual disappointment. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced. — Anthony Burgess

The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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 — John Kenneth Galbraith

Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The shortcomings of economics are not original error but uncorrected obsolescence. The obsolescence has occurred because what is convenient has become sacrosanct. Anyone who attacks such ideas must seem to be a trifle self-confident and even aggressive. The man who makes his entry by leaning against an infirm door gets an unjustified reputation for violence. Something is to be attributed to the poor state of the door. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole. — John Kenneth Galbraith

One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years. — John Kenneth Galbraith

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In 1929 the discovery of the wonders of the geometric series struck Wall Street with a force comparable to the invention of the wheel. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — 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

There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of the those who do not have insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Americans had built themselves a world of speculative pipe dreams. That world was inhabited, not by people who had to be convinced, but by people who sought excuses for believing. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Clerks in downtown hotels were said to be asking guests whether they wished the room for sleeping or jumping. Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the early days of the crash it was widely believed that Jesse L. Livermore, a Bostonian with a large and unquestionably exaggerated reputation for bear operations, leading a syndicate that was driving the market down. — John Kenneth Galbraith

No politician can praise unemployment or inflation, and there is no way of combining high employment with stable prices that does not involve some control of income and prices. Otherwise the struggle for more consumption and more income to sustain it-a struggle that modern corporations, modern unions and modern democracy all facilitate and encourage-will drive up prices. Only heavy unemployment will then temper this upward thrust. Not many wish to confront the truth that the modern economy gives a choice only between inflation, unemployment, or controls. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long-run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with Communism, lies the threat to Capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Money is what fueled the industrial society. But in the informational society, the fuel, the power, is knowledge. One has now come to see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge. — John Kenneth Galbraith

This was because of a special American commitment to the seeming magic of money creation and its presumptively wondrous economic effects. T — John Kenneth Galbraith

Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out? — John Kenneth Galbraith

Conscience is better served by a myth. — John Kenneth Galbraith