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It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
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
Would
Foolish
Goals
Economy
Custodian
Goal
Custodians
State
Suggest
States
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Government
Aesthetic
Good
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More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The Senate has unlimited debate in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the early days of the crash it was widely believed that Jesse L. Livermore, a Bostonian with a large and unquestionably exaggerated reputation for bear operations, leading a syndicate that was driving the market down.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
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Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which the minimally coherent regularly find refuge.
John Kenneth Galbraith
