QuotesTemple
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable
John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-American economist, public official, and diplomat, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism.
Economist | Canadian-American
Born: 1908-10-15 in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada
Died: April 29, 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith
War remains the decisive human failure.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
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
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.
John Kenneth Galbraith
We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
John Kenneth Galbraith
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
John Kenneth Galbraith
By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
John Kenneth Galbraith
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
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
John Kenneth Galbraith
War remains the decisive human failure.
John Kenneth Galbraith
One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
John Kenneth Galbraith