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Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
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
Originality
Easily
Especially
Work
Something
Exaggerated
Authors
Contemplating
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Only men of considerable vanity write books consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.
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
A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.
John Kenneth Galbraith
A more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The years of the Great Depression were a superb time for economists because people not knowing what could be done or what should be done would always assume that maybe an economist had the answer. If you were just a lawyer in Washington, you were nobody. But if you were an economist, you might have the answer.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Conscience is better served by a myth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The present age of contentment will come to an end only when and if the adverse developments that it fosters challenge the sense of comfortable well-being
John Kenneth Galbraith
No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousand shares of General Motors or General Electric.
John Kenneth Galbraith
One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.
John Kenneth Galbraith
These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence when originality is taken to be a mark of instability and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland.
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
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
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