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The years of the Great Depression were a superb time for economists because people not knowing what could be done or what should be done would always assume that maybe an economist had the answer. If you were just a lawyer in Washington, you were nobody. But if you were an economist, you might have the answer.

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
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Washington
Done
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Great
Assuming
Years
Answer
Superb
Always
Nobody
Economists
Would
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Depression

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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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Economics is not an exact science.
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
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No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.
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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
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The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
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All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.
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A good rule of conversation is never answer a foolish question.
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Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.
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The myth that holds that the great corporation is the puppet of the market, the powerless servant of the consumer, is, in fact one of the devices by which its power is perpetuated.
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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.
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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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Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.
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Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell.
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Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.
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For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last.
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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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If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.
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