Explore Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

Money is what fueled the industrial society. But in the informational society, the fuel, the power, is knowledge. One has now come to see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge.

There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of the those who do not have insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.

More investment trusts securities were offered in September of 1929 even than in August - the total was above $600 million. However, the nearly simultaneous promotion of Shenandoah and Blue Ridge was to stand as the pinnacle of new era finance. It is difficult not to marvel at the imagination which was implicit in this gargantuan insanity. If there must be madness something may be said for having it on a heroic scale.

To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.

The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.

Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.

Even in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many man in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them.

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.

Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy — what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.

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

Wisdom... is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion.

The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.

One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.

It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.

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.

In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.

There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . .

We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.