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The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important.

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
Life
Dignity
Questions
Reach
Beyond
Durability
Beauty
Inconvenient
Pleasure
Inquiry
May
Questioning
Important
Economics

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If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library.
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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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.
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A good rule of conversation is never answer a foolish question.
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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.
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In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistent
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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 urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce.
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No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.
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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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There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
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American university presidents are a nervous breed I have never thought well of them as a class.
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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.
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Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.
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Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
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Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations.
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The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.
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Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will.
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I've been writing a book called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. I published part of it already in The Progressive (Free Market Fraud, January 1999). But I've been interrupted these last few months. It deals with all of the things we do, in an innocent way, to cover up the truth.
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