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John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes - Page 4

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To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.

To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Errors, Choices, Investing
John Kenneth Galbraith (2017). “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, p.351, Princeton University Press

All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Fashion, Mean, Debt
John Kenneth Galbraith (1994). “A Short History of Financial Euphoria”, p.21, Penguin

Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Courage, Men, Cost

A point must be repeated: only the pathological weakness of the financial memory...allows us to believe that the modern experience of....debt...is in any way a new phenomenon.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Memories, Believe, Weakness

The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process.

John Kenneth Galbraith
House, Technique, Debate
"The United States". The New York magazine article on November 15, 1971, reprinted in "A View from the Stands", 1986.

Unemployment is rarely considered desirable except by those who have not experienced it.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Work, Unemployment, Desirable

Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Country, War, Men

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Modesty, Virtue, Economy
John Kenneth Galbraith, J. Ron Stanfield, Jacqueline Bloom Stanfield (2004). “Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith”, p.197, Univ. Press of Mississippi

I would put primary emphasis on a good standard of living equitably distributed. It can't be equal, but one that eliminates the terrible cruelty of poverty.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Poverty, Emphasis, Standards
Source: www.progressive.org

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Inspirational, Life, Beauty
The New York Times Magazine, October 9, 1960.

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
Anchors, Sea, Investing
Affluent Society (1958) ch. 11

One must always have in mind one simple fact - there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Simple, Mind, Population
John Kenneth Galbraith, J. Ron Stanfield, Jacqueline Bloom Stanfield (2004). “Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith”, p.156, Univ. Press of Mississippi

In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Style, Banking, Association

Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Men, Practice, Things In Life
"The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977.

When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble - until the day of disaster.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Sea, Law, Wonderful
"Galbraith on Crashes, Japan and Walking Sticks" by Ben Laurance and William Keegan, The Observer, June 21, 1998.

It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Food, People, House
John Kenneth Galbraith (1968). “American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power”, p.97, Transaction Publishers

Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Men, Class, Competition
John Kenneth Galbraith (1980). “Annals of an Abiding Liberal”, Plume

At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Reeds, Monetary Policy, Policy
John Kenneth Galbraith (2009). “The Great Crash 1929”, p.203, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Money is what fueled the industrial society. But in the informational society, the fuel, the power, is knowledge. One has now come to see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Ignorance, Land, Class

Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Political, Four, Politics

A more 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.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Democracy, Important, Quality
"The United States". New York magazine, November 15, 1971.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Wisdom, Knowledge, Pieces

With the American failure came world failure.

John Kenneth Galbraith
World
John Kenneth Galbraith (2017). “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, p.338, Princeton University Press

Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Past, Errors, Giving

Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Hero, Economist
"The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter 1, p. 27, 1977.

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