John Kenneth Galbraith quotes - page 6

In dealing with Mr. Nixon, it is not easy to be unfair. He invites and justifies all available criticism. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousandshares ofGeneral Motors or General Electric. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
It is in the long run that the corporation lives. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out? View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
American university presidents are a nervous breed; I have never thought well of them as a class. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the early days of the crash it was widely believed that Jesse L. Livermore, a Bostonian with a large and unquestionably exaggerated reputation for bear operations, leading a syndicate that was driving the market down. (John Kenneth Galbraith)
To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand; the spiral operates when there is too much and also,unfortunately, when there is just enough. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith
When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it. View quote
John Kenneth Galbraith