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In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.

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
Seems
Behaviour
World
Utterly
Odd
Statistics
Equally
Insane
Lunacy
Rational
Minor
Totally
Minors

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All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.
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In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism.
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It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
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Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.
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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.
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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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Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.
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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.
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Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.
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Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.
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In 1736, Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette printed an apology for its irregular appearence because its printer was with the Press, labouring for the publick Good, to make Money more plentiful. The press was busy printing money.
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Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
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Writing is a long and lonesome business back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?
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The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
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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.
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What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve.
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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.
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The more underdeveloped the country, the more overdeveloped the women.
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There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which the minimally coherent regularly find refuge.
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The family which takes it mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground.
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