Quote

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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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
Class
Clarity
Criticized
Scab
Clear
Professional
Obscurity
Equivalents
Values
Competition
Outsiders
Priestly
Less
Image
Privileged
Scabs
Makes
Rules
Preserve
Trades
Keep
Trade
Academic
Apprenticeship
Things
Value
Preserves
Exclude
Men
Building
Complexity
Treachery

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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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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In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.
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The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.
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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.
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Men will look back in amusement at the pretence that once caused people to refer to General Dynamics and North American Aviation and AT&T as private business.
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Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
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Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?
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I've long believed alas, that in highly organized industrial societies, capitalist or socialist, the stronger tendency is to converge - that if steel or automobiles are wanted and must be made on a large scale, the process will stamp its imprint on the society, whether that me be Magnitogorsk or Gary, Indiana.
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It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it.
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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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If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library.
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The present age of contentment will come to an end only when and if the adverse developments that it fosters challenge the sense of comfortable well-being
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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.
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It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.
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Economic stimulation that works through the increased outlays to the affluent has, inevitably, an aspect of soundness and sanity that is lacking in expenditure on behalf of the undeserving poor.
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Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.
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Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.
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At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean.
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I never enjoyed writing a book more indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.
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Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.
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