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
Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted. – John Kenneth Galbraith
You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too. – John Kenneth Galbraith
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite. – John Kenneth Galbraith
A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions. – John Kenneth Galbraith
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. – John Kenneth Galbraith
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. – John Kenneth Galbraith
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
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor. – 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
There are 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
Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not. – 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
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
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
The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state. – John Kenneth Galbraith
The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. – John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. – John Kenneth Galbraith
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. – John Kenneth Galbraith
