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John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes - Page 12

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Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to

Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally, there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Men, Wish, Done
John Kenneth Galbraith (2009). “The Great Crash 1929”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the dispiriting voices of doubt be muted and that there should be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Expression, Voice, People
"The Great Crash, 1929". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith, Chapter V, The Twilight of Illusion, Section II, p. 70, 1954.

From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Compassion, Voice, People
John Kenneth Galbraith (1981). “A life in our times: memoirs”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Law, Agriculture, Doe

The attraction of power we take for granted in politics.. But in economics...the thrust...is for pecuniary return, for money. And I have always felt that denies in the economic world a very large part of the motivation.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Motivation, World, Return

The traveler to the United States will do wellto 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
Class, United States, Consciousness
"The United States". The New York magazine article on November 15, 1971, reprinted in "A View from the Stands", 1986.

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Sex, Political, Vacuums

I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Ontario, Dollars, Months

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Change, Business, Organization
John Kenneth Galbraith (1969). “Ambassador's Journal”

In all modern depressions, recessions, or growth-correction, as variously they are called, we never miss the goods that are not produced. We miss only the opportunities for the labour - for the jobs - that are not provided.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Jobs, Opportunity, Missing

No intelligence system can predict what a government will do if it doesn't know itself.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Government, Knows, Ifs

The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Political, Politics, Should
John Kenneth Galbraith (1981). “A life in our times: memoirs”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Axes, Opposites, Mind
"The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter 1, p. 13, 1977.

In the old days, land was important as the giver of all things. That period is gone now. Technology and brainpower are all that matters and yet conflicts over land, specially one like on the India-China border, that yields nothing, continue. This is a burden of ancient history that we continue to carry. If tomorrow there is settlement on planet Mars, we will begin to worry if others are interested.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Technology, Yield, Land

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Power, Expectations, United States
"The United States". New York magazine, November 15, 1971.

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Men, Perfectly Normal, Aberration
John Kenneth Galbraith (2001). “The Essential Galbraith”, p.234, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Guarantees, Existence, Opposition

Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Witty, Work, Views

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Choices, Decision, Usual
"Years of the Modern". Book by J.W. Chase, 1949.

We shall have a race of men who are strong on telemetry and space communications but who cannot read anything but a blueprint or write anything but a computer program.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Strong, Communication, Writing

She is a reflection of comfortable middle-class values that do not take seriously the continuing unemployment. What I particularly regret is that she does not take seriously the intellectual decline. Having given up the Empire and the mass production of industrial goods, Britain's future lay in its scientific and artistic pre-eminence. Mrs Thatcher will be long remembered for the damage she has done.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Regret, Science, Reflection

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
Long, United States, Rewards
"The United States". The New York magazine article on November 15, 1971, reprinted in "A View from the Stands", 1986.

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
Work, People, Twenties
"Made to Last". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter 4, 1964.

There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Awful, Common, Great Depression
John Kenneth Galbraith (2017). “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, p.212, Princeton University Press

In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Food, Mean, Alcohol

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