Quote

Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.

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
Holding
Value
Humor
Employs
Economy
Richly
Attention
Persuasive
Values
Gaining
Persons
Person
Rewarding

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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I've become accustomed to supporting politicians who are more conservative than I am. This is not entirely a surprise.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Conscience is better served by a myth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to trickle down economics).
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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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
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We shall have a race of men who are strong on telemetry and space communications but who cannot read anything but a blueprint or write anything but a computer program.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Economics exists to make astrology look respectable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
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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Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
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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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
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The years of the Great Depression were a superb time for economists because people not knowing what could be done or what should be done would always assume that maybe an economist had the answer. If you were just a lawyer in Washington, you were nobody. But if you were an economist, you might have the answer.
John Kenneth Galbraith