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I predict, not because I know, but because I'm asked.

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
Asked
Predict

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Nothing so denies a person liberty as the total absence of money.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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I think without a doubt, that what is called financial genius is merely a rising market.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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The family which takes it mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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