Quote

Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

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
Speeches
Fills
Speech
Culture
Oratory
Vacuums
Vacuum

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

Image
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
We talk of the enormous virtues of work, but it turns out that that is mostly for the poor. If you're rich enough or if you're a college professor, the virtue lies in leisure and the use you make of your leisure time.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
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?
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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
Image
According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to trickle down economics).
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Image
No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals.
John Kenneth Galbraith