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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
I think the role of the Federal Reserve is enormously exaggerated.
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In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
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It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
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Power is as power does.
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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.
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.
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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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The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.
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More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
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Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
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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.
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There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate.
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Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
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Ralph [ Nader] is an old friend of mine, and he does a useful job in displaying a position.
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In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
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To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.
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Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.
John Kenneth Galbraith
