Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Reality
Mature
Economically
Dream
Appeals
Systematic
Live
Literally
Reject
Would
Scientific
Justified
Mendacity
World
Profound
Surrounded
Advertise
Commitment
Indispensable
Gullibility
Quite
Appeal
Immaturity
Culture
Rejects
Hallmark

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

Image
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
Image
Few economic problems, if any, are difficult of solution. The difficulty, all but invariably, is in confronting them. We know what needs to be done for reasons of inertia, pecuniary interest, passion or ignorance, we do not wish to say so.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
A point must be repeated: only the pathological weakness of the financial memory...allows us to believe that the modern experience of....debt...is in any way a new phenomenon.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Nothing so weakens government as persistent inflation.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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