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John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes - Page 8

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I think without a doubt, that what is called financial genius is merely a rising market.

I think without a doubt, that what is called "financial genius" is merely a rising market.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Thinking, Doubt, Genius
Source: www.progressive.org

A [New Yorker ] is what it has always been. It combines those who pursue the truth with those who pursue the rewards of orthodoxy and those who pursue what is comfortable to the rich.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Rewards, Orthodoxy, Rich
Source: progressive.org

The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Years, Hundred, Capitalism
Source: www.progressive.org

I am for a close global association in trade and financial matters, rather than the opposite possibility of excessive nationalism, as manifested in the two world wars.

John Kenneth Galbraith
War, Two, Opposites
Source: www.progressive.org

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
Time, Moving, Political
"The Convenient Reverse of Logic in Our Time". Commencement address at the American University. Printed in "A View from the Stands", book by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1986.

Genius is a rising stock market.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Genius, Investing, Rising

The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Business, Investing, World
John Kenneth Galbraith (1994). “A Short History of Financial Euphoria”, p.21, Penguin

Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Technology, Political Will, May

There are a significant number of learned men and women who hold that any successful effort to make ideas lively, intelligible and interesting is a manifestation of deficient scholarship. This is the fortress behind which the minimally coherent regularly find refuge.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Successful, Men, Ideas
John Kenneth Galbraith (1988). “Economics in Perspective: A Critical History”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.

John Kenneth Galbraith
War, Commitment, Competition
John Kenneth Galbraith (1971). “The new industrial state”, Houghton Mifflin

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Book, Reading, Ignorance

There is an enormous thrust in our time to have a simple answer. And that simple answer is that all depends on Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve. And Alan, who is an old acquaintance of mine, is a marvelous performer in the impression he gives of enormously great perception.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Simple, Giving, Perception
Source: progressive.org

And there was a deeper, less visible effect of the Truman loyalty program. Seeing its consequences for certain individuals and fearing its intrusion on their own lives, many in the government sought protection by strongly asserting their anti-Communism. In the public action that ensued, policy was based not on reality but, instinctively or deliberately, on personal caution...Those who urged a militant and sometimes military anti-Communism were considered sound, trustworthy and personally safe; those who questioned such a course were politically unsafe, possible even slightly disloyal.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Loyalty, Military, Reality

Those who yearn for the end of capitalism should pray for government by men who believe that all positive action is inimical to what they call thoughtfully the fundamental principles of free enterprise.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Believe, Men, Principles
"Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter XXI, "Afterword," p. 312, 1975.

The massive reduction in risk that is inherent in the development of the modern corporation has been far from fully appreciated.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Risk, Development, Corporations
John Kenneth Galbraith (1998). “The Affluent Society”, p.84, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Umpires, People, Virtue
The Guardian, May 23, 1992.

It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Economy, Treats, Marxist
John Kenneth Galbraith (2001). “The Essential Galbraith”, p.191, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.

John Kenneth Galbraith
War, Faces, Nuclear
"The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism". "Quest for Peace: an Introduction". Book edited by John M. Whiteley, 1986.

Get the process of negotiation away from the small specialized group that some people have called the "nuclear theologians" ... Only a few people can understand the nature of these weapons ... This kept the whole discussion to a very limited group of people who, in a way, had assumed responsibility for saying whether we should live or die.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Responsibility, People, Nuclear
"Quest for Peace: an Introduction". Book by John Whiteley, 1986.

There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of the those who do not have insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Memories, Past, Appreciate
John Kenneth Galbraith (1994). “A Short History of Financial Euphoria”, p.17, Penguin

Foresight is an imperfect thing - all prevision in economics is imperfect.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Imperfect Things, Economics, Foresight
John Kenneth Galbraith (2017). “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, p.312, Princeton University Press

Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Simple, Mind, Simple Minds
John Kenneth Galbraith (1998). “The Affluent Society”, p.220, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Nothing in our time is more interesting than the erstwhile capitalist corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under the imperatives of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Organization, Interesting, Together
John Kenneth Galbraith (1971). “The new industrial state”, Houghton Mifflin

The seminar in economic theory conducted by Hayek at the L.S.E. in the 1930s was attended, it came to seem, by all of the economists of my generation - Nicky Kaldor , Thomas Balogh, L. K. Jah, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, the list could be indefinitely extended. The urge to participate (and correct Hayek) was ruthlessly competitive.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Generations, Lists, Hayek

The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Thinking, Circles, Corporations
John Kenneth Galbraith (1971). “The new industrial state”, Houghton Mifflin

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