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
Wealth
Society
Made
Luxuries
Affluent
Necessities
Distinction
Luxury
Useful
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I've been writing a book called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. I published part of it already in The Progressive (Free Market Fraud, January 1999). But I've been interrupted these last few months. It deals with all of the things we do, in an innocent way, to cover up the truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Unemployment is rarely considered desirable except by those who have not experienced it.
John Kenneth Galbraith
A [New Yorker ] is what it has always been. It combines those who pursue the truth with those who pursue the rewards of orthodoxy and those who pursue what is comfortable to the rich.
John Kenneth Galbraith
When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.
John Kenneth Galbraith
For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I do the best with what exists.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.
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.
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
A very complicated mass of things influences the economy - the speculative effect, government policy, consumer borrowing and spending, the level of technical innovation (which I concede, although everyone emphasizes it too much), and much more - including, of course, the rate of inflation.
John Kenneth Galbraith
According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.
John Kenneth Galbraith
One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
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
[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt was the central world figure in the two great disasters of this century - the Great Depression and World War II. By contrast, JFK came in relatively peaceful, agreeable times.
John Kenneth Galbraith
