John Kenneth Galbraith

Quotes

1. Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the most unpredictable in their consequences.

2. 

   The advisers and counselors were not, however, analyzing the danger or even the possibility. They were serving only as the custodians of bad memories.

   p. 184

3. 

   This view that the action of the Federal Reserve authorities in 1927 was responsible for the speculation and collapse which followed has never been seriously shaken. There are reasons why it is attractive. It is simple, and it exonerates both the American people and the economic system from substantial blame... Yet the explanation obviously assumes that people will always speculate if only they can get the money to finance it. Nothing could be farther from the case. There were times before and there has been long periods since when credit was plentiful and cheap—far cheaper than in 1927-29—and when speculation was negligible. Nor was speculation out of control after 1927, except that it was beyond the reach of men who did not want in the least to control it. The explanation is a tribute only to a recurrent preference, in economic matters, for formidable nonsense.

4. 

   Wall Street's crime, in the eyes of its classical enemies, was less its power than its morals.

   p. 155

5. 

   Despite a flattering supposition to the contrary, people come readily to terms with power. There is little reason to think that the power of the great bankers, while they were assumed to have it, was much resented. But as the ghosts of numerous tyrants, from Julius Caesar to Benito Mussolini will testify, people are very hard on those who, having had power, lose it or are destroyed. Then anger at past arrogance is joined with contempt for the present weakness. The victim or his corpse is made to suffer all available indignities.

   p. 115

6. 

   The values of a society totally preoccupied with making money are not altogether reassuring.

7. 

   And after they have started the action will always look, as it did to the frightened men in the Federal Reserve Board in February 1929, like a decision in favor of immediate as against ultimate death. As we have seen, the immediate death not only has the disadvantage of being immediate but of identifying the executioner.

   p. 190

8. 

   Our political tradition sets great store by the generalized symbol of evil. This is the wrongdoer whose wrongdoing will be taken by the public to be the secret propensity of a whole community or class.

   p. 154

9. 

   It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the disturbing voices of doubt be muted and that there be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence.

10. 

    Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

11. 

    In these matters, as often in our culture, it is far, far better to be wrong in a respectable way than to be right for the wrong reasons.

12. 

    Our political life favors the extremes of speech; the man who is gifted in the arts of abuse is bound to be a notable, if not always a great figure.

    p. 110