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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
University Teacher
John K. Galbraith
Public
Equally
Almost
Decisions
Choices
Certainly
Though
Choice
Every
Policy
Narrowest
Good
Economic
Ardently
Decision
Debated
Courses
Usual
More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Nothing so weakens government as persistent inflation.
John Kenneth Galbraith
One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Nothing so denies a person liberty as the total absence of money.
John Kenneth Galbraith
A wrong decision isn't forever it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever they can never be retrieved.
John Kenneth Galbraith
It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest.
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It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it.
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Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy — what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.
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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.
John Kenneth Galbraith
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Conscience is better served by a myth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.
John Kenneth Galbraith
