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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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John Kenneth Galbraith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1908
Born: October 15
Died: 2006
Died: April 29
Diplomat
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Politician
University Teacher
John K. Galbraith
Looks
Forecasting
Make
Astrology
Respectable
Economist
Favourite
Function
Economic
Look

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is as the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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The present age of contentment will come to an end only when and if the adverse developments that it fosters challenge the sense of comfortable well-being
John Kenneth Galbraith
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It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The seminar in economic theory conducted by Hayek at the L.S.E. in the 1930s was attended, it came to seem, by all of the economists of my generation - Nicky Kaldor , Thomas Balogh, L. K. Jah, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, the list could be indefinitely extended. The urge to participate (and correct Hayek) was ruthlessly competitive.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith