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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
Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that create the wants.
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In the early days of the crash it was widely believed that Jesse L. Livermore, a Bostonian with a large and unquestionably exaggerated reputation for bear operations, leading a syndicate that was driving the market down.
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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 it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.
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Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand the spiral operates when there is too much and also,unfortunately, when there is just enough.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The spirit should never grow old.
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We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
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I predict, not because I know, but because I'm asked.
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People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
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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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Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
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Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
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Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
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The Senate has unlimited debate in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process.
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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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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
The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.
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Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
John Kenneth Galbraith
