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People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
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
Part
Privilege
Always
Complete
People
Material
Destruction
Materials
Advantage
Affluence
Risk
Investing
Rather
Surrender
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate.
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
Those days [of the Vietnam War] you couldn't get on a bus going to the South without expecting a riot over something or the other. All of that has disappeared thanks to Lyndon Johnson.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Few economic problems, if any, are difficult of solution. The difficulty, all but invariably, is in confronting them. We know what needs to be done for reasons of inertia, pecuniary interest, passion or ignorance, we do not wish to say so.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.
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
It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound as always in such times they asked only that the dispiriting voices of doubt be muted and that there should be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand they are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced these moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It's a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.
John Kenneth Galbraith
We talk of the enormous virtues of work, but it turns out that that is mostly for the poor. If you're rich enough or if you're a college professor, the virtue lies in leisure and the use you make of your leisure time.
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
Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
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
Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
