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One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
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
Little
Listen
Enough
Silence
Celebrated
Politics
Presidents
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More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is as the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable.
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
It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I am for a close global association in trade and financial matters, rather than the opposite possibility of excessive nationalism, as manifested in the two world wars.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I predict, not because I know, but because I'm asked.
John Kenneth Galbraith
If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I accept the global complex and global trade more than do some of my liberal colleagues because I consider this a wise alternative to national tension and conflict.
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
In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.
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Economics is not an exact science.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I think without a doubt, that what is called financial genius is merely a rising market.
John Kenneth Galbraith
If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
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
There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth. Aspirin does little but dull pain. Alcohol is important mostly for making people more or less drunk ... There being so little to be said, much is to be invented.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I do the best with what exists.
John Kenneth Galbraith
