By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Twentieth Century
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
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
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Virtues, Virtue
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Communism
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Thinking, Originality
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: Honesty, Change, Choice
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Revolutionaries, Revolutions, Revolution
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Economy, Economics
One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wisdom
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: Truth, Attitude, Change, Rationality
There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Wealth
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
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Pessimism
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
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Enemy, Events, Humanity
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
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
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
The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it by consuming its products.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Consumerism
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
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Failures, Mistakes, Immortality
There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Beauty
The happiest time of anyone’s life is just after the first divorce.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Divorce
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
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
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Memories, Politics
It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Topics: Government
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
- Henry Adams American Historian
- Gordie Howe Canadian Hockey Player
- Philip Roth American Novelist, Short-story Writer
- Isabel Allende Chilean Novelist
- Daniel Kahneman American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist
- Hannah Arendt German-American Political Theorist
- Art Linkletter Canadian-born American Radio Personality
- Alex Trebek American TV Personality
- Lionel Trilling American Critic
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