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Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design . . . The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

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
Invention
Slightly
Celebrated
Innovation
Finance
Hail
Financial
Version
Lend
Design
Established
Unstable
Small
Wheels
Variation
Often
Exception
Skeptical
Without
Operations
Wheel
World
Versions
Described
Hails

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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.
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A [New Yorker ] is what it has always been. It combines those who pursue the truth with those who pursue the rewards of orthodoxy and those who pursue what is comfortable to the rich.
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Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
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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.
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Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
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In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistent
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According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.
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The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.
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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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The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
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There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater.
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Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.
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There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . .
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The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.
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In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand the spiral operates when there is too much and also,unfortunately, when there is just enough.
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You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
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Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
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Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
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One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.
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Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
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