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If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.

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
Competition
Percent
Already
Honest
Reputation
Beat
Beats

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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In the early days of the crash it was widely believed that Jesse L. Livermore, a Bostonian with a large and unquestionably exaggerated reputation for bear operations, leading a syndicate that was driving the market down.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
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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Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations.
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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Nothing so denies a person liberty as the total absence of money.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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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Economic stimulation that works through the increased outlays to the affluent has, inevitably, an aspect of soundness and sanity that is lacking in expenditure on behalf of the undeserving poor.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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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
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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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Almost every aspect of its (Federal Reserve) history should be approached with a discriminating disregard for what is commonly taught or believed.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that create the wants.
John Kenneth Galbraith