John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a Canadian-born American economist and public servant. A leading scholar of the American Institutionalist school, he is one of the most famous economists of the post-World War II era.
Born in Iona Station, Ontario, and educated at the universities of Toronto, California, and Cambridge, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1931. In 1939, he became an assistant professor of economics at Princeton and held various administrative posts before becoming a professor of economics at Harvard 1949–75. He was U.S. ambassador to India 1961–63.
A Keynesian economist, Galbraith advocated government spending to stimulate the economy. He criticized American society’s obsession for consumer goods, arguing that a more significant portion of wealth should be spent on infrastructure, education, and other improvements shared by the public.
Galbraith was also known for the literary excellence of his writing on public affairs. His works include American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952,) The Great Crash (1955,) The Affluent Society (1958,) The Liberal Hour (1960,) The New Industrial State (1967,) The Age of Uncertainty (1977,) which was made into a BBC television series, The Anatomy of Power (1983,) The Culture of Contentment (1992,) and The Good Society (1996.)
Galbraith also wrote his autobiography, A Life in Our Times (1981.) He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice—in 1946 and 2000.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Kenneth Galbraith
Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Information
The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Cities, City Life
The questions that are beyond the reach of economics—the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life—may be inconvenient but they are important.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Questioning
In economics the majority is always wrong.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economy, Economics
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Pessimism
Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Money
Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Audiences
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Power
When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Conviction, Change
Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Past
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Weight, Diet, Food
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Thinking, Originality
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Work
You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Government
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Humanity, Events, Enemy
The traveler to the United States will do well 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
Topics: Class
The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Technology
If anything is evident about people who manage money, it is that the task attracts a very low level of talent, one that is protected in its highly imperfect profession by the mystery that is thought to enfold the subject of economics in general and of money in particular.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Money
Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Liberalism
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Memories, Politics
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Money
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Communism
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Virtue
Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth
An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. 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
Topics: Age, Aging
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Government
Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economics
The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Accomplishment
Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economy
If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Virtue, Virtues
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Immortality, Failures, Mistakes
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Opposition, Society, Organization
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Pessimism
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Organization
Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth, Riches
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