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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
Kinds
Two
Kind
Forecasters
Investing
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.
John Kenneth Galbraith
We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is as the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.
John Kenneth Galbraith
It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Writing is a long and lonesome business back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?
John Kenneth Galbraith
There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth. Aspirin does little but dull pain. Alcohol is important mostly for making people more or less drunk ... There being so little to be said, much is to be invented.
John Kenneth Galbraith
A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
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
Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I predict, not because I know, but because I'm asked.
John Kenneth Galbraith
No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic.
John Kenneth Galbraith