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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
Something
Exaggerated
Authors
Contemplating
Originality
Easily
Especially
Work

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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There is an enormous thrust in our time to have a simple answer. And that simple answer is that all depends on Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. And Alan, who is an old acquaintance of mine, is a marvelous performer in the impression he gives of enormously great perception.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Nothing so weakens government as persistent inflation.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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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
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Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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Men will look back in amusement at the pretence that once caused people to refer to General Dynamics and North American Aviation and AT&T as private business.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money
John Kenneth Galbraith
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In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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