Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Made
Luxuries
Affluent
Necessities
Distinction
Luxury
Useful
Wealth
Society
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.
John Kenneth Galbraith
A more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.
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
American university presidents are a nervous breed I have never thought well of them as a class.
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
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.
John Kenneth Galbraith
No solution [to the problem of poverty] is so effective as providing income to the poor. Whether in the form of food, housing, health services, education or money, income is an excellent antidote for deprivation. No truth has spawned so much ingenious evasion.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In economics, the majority is always wrong.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Ralph [ Nader] is an old friend of mine, and he does a useful job in displaying a position.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.
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
The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
John Kenneth Galbraith
THE GENIUS of the industrial system lies in its organized use of capital and technology. This is made possible, as we have duly seen, by extensively replacing the market with planning.
John Kenneth Galbraith
