In economics the majority is always wrong.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economy, Economics
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Thinking, Originality
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
No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Boredom
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
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Reality
If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
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
Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: City Life, Cities
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Guilt
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
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Government
Few things are more tempting to a writer than to repeat, admiringly, what he has said before.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Writers
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Pessimism
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
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
Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Criticism
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
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economy, Economics
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Power
Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Work
We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Police, Control
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Attention
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
There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth
In the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there’s no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Change, Honesty, Choice
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
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