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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?

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
Always
Business
Shells
Shows
Composition
Thought
Page
Problem
Awful
Back
Pages
Find
Questions
Hover
Writing
Empty
Lonesome
Long
Problems
Shell

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
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There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.
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I am for a close global association in trade and financial matters, rather than the opposite possibility of excessive nationalism, as manifested in the two world wars.
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War remains the decisive human failure.
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Nothing so denies a person liberty as the total absence of money.
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The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years.
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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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In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism.
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All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
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We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.
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Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money
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The power of the corporate bureaucracy - the power of technostructure (a term that did not take off) - is something to which I still adhere.
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There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.
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I accept the global complex and global trade more than do some of my liberal colleagues because I consider this a wise alternative to national tension and conflict.
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A wrong decision isn't forever it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever they can never be retrieved.
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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.
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THE GENIUS of the industrial system lies in its organized use of capital and technology. This is made possible, as we have duly seen, by extensively replacing the market with planning.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
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There is an enormous thrust in our time to have a simple answer. And that simple answer is that all depends on Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. And Alan, who is an old acquaintance of mine, is a marvelous performer in the impression he gives of enormously great perception.
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I've long believed alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, the stronger tendency is to converge - that if steel or automobiles are wanted and must be made on a large scale, the process will stamp its imprint on the society, whether that me be Magnitogorsk or Gary, Indiana.
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