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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

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John Kenneth Galbraith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1908
Born: October 15
Died: 2006
Died: April 29
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Non-Fiction Writer
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John K. Galbraith
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Nonetheless
Must
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Speech
Partisans
Eschew
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More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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Economics exists to make astrology look respectable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
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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
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Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.
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It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
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The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce.
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The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important.
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In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.
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Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.
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Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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I never enjoyed writing a book more indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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This is a world inhabited not by people who have to be persuaded to believe but by people who want an excuse to believe.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked.
John Kenneth Galbraith