Explore Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.

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

If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics).

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.

If you're rich you can buy books. If you're poor, you need a library.

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is.

The spirit should never grow old.

It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast - even the English can't do it.

Good writing, and this is especially important in a subject such as economics, must also involve the reader in the matter at hand. It is not enough to explain. The images that are in the mind of the writer must be made to reappear in the mind of the reader, and it is the absence of this ability that causes much economic writing to be condemned, quite properly, as abstract.

Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.

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.

If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialised countries

It's much easier to point out the problem than it is to say just how it should be solved.

If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.

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.

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.

We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is as the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable.