John Kenneth Galbraith

Quotes

1. Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego. It is well no doubt, to reflect on how much one owes to others.

2. 

   Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.

3. 

   The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground.

4. 

   Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are.

5. 

   More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.

6. 

   But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound.

   p. 194

7. 

   Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage.

8. 

   It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

9. 

   Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

10. 

    But there is still a considerable difference between a failure to do enough that is right and a determination to do much that is wrong.

    p. 192

11. 

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

12. 

    Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.