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In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.

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
Wealth
Society
Made
Luxuries
Affluent
Necessities
Distinction
Luxury
Useful

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The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.
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Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.
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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.
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Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.
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Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover.
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In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated.
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To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.
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In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
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The notion that you would initiate a new product without preparing the way by persuasion and advertising and salesmanship is fantastic. It's an integral part of the system.
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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).
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Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
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The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.
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Get the process of negotiation away from the small specialized group that some people have called the nuclear theologians ... Only a few people can understand the nature of these weapons ... This kept the whole discussion to a very limited group of people who, in a way, had assumed responsibility for saying whether we should live or die.
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Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
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Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
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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.
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But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.
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Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.
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