John Kenneth Galbraith - The Affluent Society (1958)

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The leisure class has been replaced by another and much larger class to which work has none of the older connotation of pain, fatigue, or other mental or physical discomfort.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
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

John Kenneth Galbraith
We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed. In the absence of new developments, old ones may seem very impressive for quite a long while.

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

John Kenneth Galbraith
Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.

John Kenneth Galbraith
"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.

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

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

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

John Kenneth Galbraith
Over the span of man's history, although a phenomenal amount of education, persuasion, indoctrination and incantation have been devoted to the effort, ordinary people have never been quite persuaded that toil is as agreeable as its alternatives. Thus to take increased well-being partly in the form of more goods and partly in the form of more leisure is unquestionably rational.

John Kenneth Galbraith
In the conventional wisdom of conservatives, the modern search for security is regularly billed as the greatest single threat to economic progress.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The income men derive from producing things of slight consequence is of great consequence. The production reflects the low marginal utility of the goods to society. The income reflects the high total utility of a livelihood to a person.

John Kenneth Galbraith
Every corner of the public psyche is canvassed by some of the most talented citizens to see if the desire for some merchandisable product can be cultivated.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The miserable consumption of the poor is partly the result of the ostentatious demands of the rich. There isn't enough for both, and the latter get far more than they need...But could anything seriously be done about it?

John Kenneth Galbraith
No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The shortcomings of economics are not original error but uncorrected obsolescence. The obsolescence has occurred because what is convenient has become sacrosanct. Anyone who attacks such ideas must seem to be a trifle self-confident and even aggressive. The man who makes his entry by leaning against an infirm door gets an unjustified reputation for violence. Something is to be attributed to the poor state of the door.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The family which takes it 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.

John Kenneth Galbraith
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.

John Kenneth Galbraith
In the affluent society no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.

John Kenneth Galbraith
It is far, far better and much safer to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

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

John Kenneth Galbraith
One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish.

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

John Kenneth Galbraith
Few things are as immutable as the addiction of political groups to the ideas by which they have won office.

John Kenneth Galbraith
One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.

John Kenneth Galbraith
The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.

John Kenneth Galbraith