John Kenneth Galbraith quotes - page 3

Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
One must always have in mind one simple fact - there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
"Poverty" Pitt exclaimed "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States it is not annoying but it is a disgrace. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The first goal of the technostructure is its own security. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
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. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Conscience is better served by a myth. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
SOME YEARS, like some poets, and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Any consideration of the life and larger social existence of the modern corporate man... begins and also largely ends with the effect of one all-embracing force. That is organization - the highly structured assemblage of men, and now some women, of which he is a part. It is to this, at the expense of family, friends, sex, recreation and sometimes health and effective control of alcoholic intake, that he is expected to devote his energies. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
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. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economics is not an exact science. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
With the American failure came world failure. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The traveler to the United States will do well, however, to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
THE GENIUS of the industrial system lies in its organized use of capital and technology. This is made possible, as we have duly seen, by extensively replacing the market with planning. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
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. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Power is as power does. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith