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There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.

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
Investing
Kinds
Two
Kind
Forecasters

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest.
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.
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For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last.
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
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 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
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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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Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important.
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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It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound as always in such times they asked only that the dispiriting voices of doubt be muted and that there should be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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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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A point must be repeated: only the pathological weakness of the financial memory...allows us to believe that the modern experience of....debt...is in any way a new phenomenon.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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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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Franklin Delano Roosevelt and J.F Kennedy were Presidents in very different times.
John Kenneth Galbraith