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The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.

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
Wholly
Manifestation
Speech
Culture
Think
Thinking
Commencement
Satisfactory

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.
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According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.
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The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.
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[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt was the central world figure in the two great disasters of this century - the Great Depression and World War II. By contrast, JFK came in relatively peaceful, agreeable times.
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Ralph [ Nader] is an old friend of mine, and he does a useful job in displaying a position.
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There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
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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.
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Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?
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Men will look back in amusement at the pretence that once caused people to refer to General Dynamics and North American Aviation and AT&T as private business.
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In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
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Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.
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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We talk of the enormous virtues of work, but it turns out that that is mostly for the poor. If you're rich enough or if you're a college professor, the virtue lies in leisure and the use you make of your leisure time.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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The family which takes it mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground.
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In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.
John Kenneth Galbraith