John Kenneth Galbraith
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.Collection: People
Economics exists to make astrology look respectable.Collection: Astrology
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.Collection: Looks
If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics).Collection: Horse
The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.Collection: Government
The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.Collection: Money
There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.Collection: Two
The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.Collection: Greed
There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate.Collection: Poverty
The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware.Collection: Submission
The problem of the modern economy is not a failure of a knowledge of economics; it's a failure of a knowledge of history.Collection: Problem
No solution [to the problem of poverty] is so effective as providing income to the poor. Whether in the form of food, housing, health services, education or money, income is an excellent antidote for deprivation. No truth has spawned so much ingenious evasion.Collection: Income
Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy — what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.Collection: Horse
One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.Collection: Writing
The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.Collection: Responsibility
When everything else failed, we can still become immortal by making an enormous blunder.Collection: Death
Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.Collection: Economic
There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people.Collection: Fall
Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.Collection: Writing
Much discussion of money involves a heavy overlay of priestly incantation.Collection: Heavy
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.Collection: Stupid
Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.Collection: Effort
It is in the long run that the corporation lives.Collection: Running
Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.Collection: Men
One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.Collection: Work
Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do.Collection: Thinking
Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.Collection: Marketing
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.Collection: Compassion
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.Collection: Compassion
The fully planned economy, so far from being unpopular, is warmly regarded by those who know it best.Collection: Economics
In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought.Collection: Economy
Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed. In the absence of new developments, old ones may seem very impressive for quite a long while.Collection: Baby
It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.Collection: Axes
In 1736, Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette printed an apology for its irregular appearence because its printer was "with the Press, labouring for the publick Good, to make Money more plentiful." The press was busy printing money.Collection: Apology
In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand; the spiral operates when there is too much and also,unfortunately, when there is just enough.Collection: Demand
I have never understood why one's affections must be confined, as once with women, to a single country.Collection: Country
We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.Collection: New York
In all modern depressions, recessions, or growth-correction, as variously they are called, we never miss the goods that are not produced. We miss only the opportunities for the labour - for the jobs - that are not provided.Collection: Jobs
Some things were never meant to be recycled.Collection: Politics
My rule on honorary degrees has always been to have one more than Arthur Schlesinger Jr.Collection: Education