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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
Society
Made
Luxuries
Affluent
Necessities
Distinction
Luxury
Useful
Wealth
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence when originality is taken to be a mark of instability and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland.
John Kenneth Galbraith
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.
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There is an enormous thrust in our time to have a simple answer. And that simple answer is that all depends on Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. And Alan, who is an old acquaintance of mine, is a marvelous performer in the impression he gives of enormously great perception.
John Kenneth Galbraith
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
I do the best with what exists.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.
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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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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?
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To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . .
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Emancipation of belief is the most formidable of the tasks of reform and the one on which all else depends.
John Kenneth Galbraith
We shall have a race of men who are strong on telemetry and space communications but who cannot read anything but a blueprint or write anything but a computer program.
John Kenneth Galbraith