John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

266 Sourced Quotes

The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.

John Kenneth Galbraith
No one knew, but it cannot be stressed too frequently, that for effective incantation knowledge is neither necessary nor assumed.

John Kenneth Galbraith
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

John Kenneth Galbraith
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The hallmark of the conventional wisdom is acceptability. It has the approval of those to whom it is addressed.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The more underdeveloped the country, the more overdeveloped the women.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Much of the world's work, it has been said, is done by men who do not feel quite well. [Karl] Marx is a case in point.

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

John Kenneth Galbraith
Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards.

John Kenneth Galbraith
You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The superior confidence which people repose in the tall man is well merited. Being tall, he is more visible than other men and being more visible, he is much more closely watched. In consequence, his behavior is far better than that of smaller men.

John Kenneth Galbraith
You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The market had reasserted itself as an impersonal force beyond the power of any person to control, and, while this is the way markets are supposed to be, it was horrible.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The leisure class has been replaced by another and much larger class to which work has none of the older connotation of pain, fatigue, or other mental or physical discomfort. We have failed to observe the emergence of this New Class, as it may be simply called.

John Kenneth Galbraith
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?

John Kenneth Galbraith
Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Few things are more tempting to a writer than to repeat, admiringly, what he has said before.

John Kenneth Galbraith
There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.

John Kenneth Galbraith
There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations.

John Kenneth Galbraith
There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.

John Kenneth Galbraith