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But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple.
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
Simple
Retarded
Everyone
Legislators
Fear
Seeming
Even
Mentally
Merit
Questions
Afraid
Asks
Legislator
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
A very complicated mass of things influences the economy - the speculative effect, government policy, consumer borrowing and spending, the level of technical innovation (which I concede, although everyone emphasizes it too much), and much more - including, of course, the rate of inflation.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy — what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.
John Kenneth Galbraith
To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the conventional wisdom of conservatives, the modern search for security is regularly billed as the greatest single threat to economic progress.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which the minimally coherent regularly find refuge.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.
John Kenneth Galbraith
If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to trickle down economics).
John Kenneth Galbraith
The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.
John Kenneth Galbraith
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
John Kenneth Galbraith
All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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