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There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater.

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
Become
Affluence
Much
Contrast
Lifetime
Private
Question
Public
Called
Greater
Squalor

More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt was the central world figure in the two great disasters of this century - the Great Depression and World War II. By contrast, JFK came in relatively peaceful, agreeable times.
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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The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.
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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.
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In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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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
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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.
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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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
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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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In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library.
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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Only men of considerable vanity write books consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.
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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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
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People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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No solution [to the problem of poverty] is so effective as providing income to the poor. Whether in the form of food, housing, health services, education or money, income is an excellent antidote for deprivation. No truth has spawned so much ingenious evasion.
John Kenneth Galbraith