Quote

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Agree
Pessimism
Superior
Superiors
Agreement
Intellect
Mark

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

Image
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Almost every aspect of its (Federal Reserve) history should be approached with a discriminating disregard for what is commonly taught or believed.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
This is a world inhabited not by people who have to be persuaded to believe but by people who want an excuse to believe.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
There is an enormous thrust in our time to have a simple answer. And that simple answer is that all depends on Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. And Alan, who is an old acquaintance of mine, is a marvelous performer in the impression he gives of enormously great perception.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
I've been writing a book called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. I published part of it already in The Progressive (Free Market Fraud, January 1999). But I've been interrupted these last few months. It deals with all of the things we do, in an innocent way, to cover up the truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
I do the best with what exists.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Conscience is better served by a myth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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