John Kenneth Galbraith
According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.Collection: Air
I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula.Collection: Formulas
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.Collection: Imperfect
Third party politics, at least since La Follette, has always had an element of romance.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Order
Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design . . . The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.Collection: Design
The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products.Collection: Saving
Nothing so weakens government as persistent inflation.Collection: Government
Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.Collection: Past
Had the Bible been in clear straightforward language, had the ambiguities and contradictions been edited out, and had the language been constantly modernised to accord with contemporary taste it would almost certainly have been, or become, a work of lesser influence.Collection: Atheism
There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth. Aspirin does little but dull pain. Alcohol is important mostly for making people more or less drunk ... There being so little to be said, much is to be invented.Collection: Pain
Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.Collection: Wisdom
Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.Collection: Vacuums
The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.Collection: Men
It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved.Collection: Technology
Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.Collection: Realizing
People are the common denominator of progress; no improvement is possible with unimproved people.Collection: Teaching
The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important.Collection: Important
Conscience is better served by a myth.Collection: Myth
You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.Collection: World
In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism.Collection: Criticism
Under the privilege of the First Amendment many, many ridiculous things are said.Collection: Firsts
Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority.Collection: War
Only foolish people are completely secure.Collection: People
Talk of revolution is one of avoiding reality.Collection: Reality
The myth that holds that the great corporation is the puppet of the market, the powerless servant of the consumer, is, in fact one of the devices by which its power is perpetuated.Collection: Puppets
More investment trusts securities were offered in September of 1929 even than in August - the total was above $600 million. However, the nearly simultaneous promotion of Shenandoah and Blue Ridge was to stand as the pinnacle of new era finance. It is difficult not to marvel at the imagination which was implicit in this gargantuan insanity. If there must be madness something may be said for having it on a heroic scale.Collection: Blue
If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library.Collection: Book
You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.Collection: Kindness
[The] men of the technostructure are the new and universal priesthood. Their religion is business success; their test of virtue is growth and profit. Their bible is the computer printout; their communion bench is the committee room.Collection: Men
In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.Collection: Luxury
I do the best with what exists.Collection: Do The Best
The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce.Collection: Produce
But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated.Collection: Political
If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialised countriesCollection: Country
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.Collection: Understanding
Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.Collection: Believe
In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistentCollection: Economics
The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.Collection: Business
Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.Collection: Time
Genius is a rising stock market.Collection: Genius
I think without a doubt, that what is called "financial genius" is merely a rising market.Collection: Thinking
A [New Yorker ] is what it has always been. It combines those who pursue the truth with those who pursue the rewards of orthodoxy and those who pursue what is comfortable to the rich.Collection: Rewards
It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it.Collection: Travel
The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.Collection: Political
In the old days, land was important as the giver of all things. That period is gone now. Technology and brainpower are all that matters and yet conflicts over land, specially one like on the India-China border, that yields nothing, continue. This is a burden of ancient history that we continue to carry. If tomorrow there is settlement on planet Mars, we will begin to worry if others are interested.Collection: Technology
If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.Collection: World
If a man didn't make sense, the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation, for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity.Collection: Men
No intelligence system can predict what a government will do if it doesn't know itself.Collection: Government