John Kenneth Galbraith

Quotes

1. Marx profoundly affected those who did not accept his system. His influence extended to those who least supposed they were subject to it.

2. 

   Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.

3. 

   "Poverty" Pitt exclaimed "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States it is not annoying but it is a disgrace.

4. 

   In a community wherepublic services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.

5. 

   In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.

6. 

   The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.

7. 

   It is in the long run that the corporation lives.

8. 

   The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

9. 

   One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.

10. 

    A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.

11. 

    Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.

12. 

    We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.