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
One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wisdom
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economics, Economy
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Government
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
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Risk, Leaders, Leadership, Fear
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
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
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Virtue, Virtues
There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth
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
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Attitude, Change, Truth, Rationality
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
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Virtue
There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Beauty
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
There are a few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Diplomacy
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Communism
The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Science
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.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Politics
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
The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Cities, City Life
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
Unemployment is rarely considered desirable except by those who have not experienced it.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Work
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
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Food, Diet, Weight
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Pessimism
There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Science
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