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In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated.
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
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John K. Galbraith
Courses
Usual
Public
Equally
Almost
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Though
Choice
Every
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Narrowest
Good
Economic
Ardently
Decision
Debated
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.
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Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.
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We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.
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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.
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Happiness does not require an expanding economy
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The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
John Kenneth Galbraith
If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.
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In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.
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The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.
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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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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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Few economic problems, if any, are difficult of solution. The difficulty, all but invariably, is in confronting them. We know what needs to be done for reasons of inertia, pecuniary interest, passion or ignorance, we do not wish to say so.
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You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.
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When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith
