Quote

A point must be repeated: only the pathological weakness of the financial memory...allows us to believe that the modern experience of....debt...is in any way a new phenomenon.

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
Modern
Phenomenon
Point
Allows
Experience
Investing
Must
Debt
Believe
Financial
Way
Memory
Weakness
Pathological
Memories
Repeated

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The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
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If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition.
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.
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We shall have a race of men who are strong on telemetry and space communications but who cannot read anything but a blueprint or write anything but a computer program.
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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.
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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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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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American university presidents are a nervous breed I have never thought well of them as a class.
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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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Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
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One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
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