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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

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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
Truth
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Danger
Intimate
Poetry
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Wand
Morning
Golden
Wands
Waiting
Illusion
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Term
Wait
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More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is as the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable.
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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.
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Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.
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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.
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Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
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The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.
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You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
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Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
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It takes a certain brashness to attack the accepted economic legendsbut noneat all toperpetuatethem. So theyare perpetuated.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.
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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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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people.
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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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If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition.
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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.
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