Quotations by:
    Galbraith, John Kenneth

The tendency of bureaucracy [is] to find purpose in whatever it is doing.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“Foreign Policy: The Plain Lessons of a Bad Decade,” Foreign Policy (Dec 1970)

Let’s begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes — indeed, deletes — the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“Free Market Fraud”, The Progressive (Jan 1999)

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“H.L. Mencken,” The Washington Post (14 Sep 1980)

There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy, but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“The American Ambassador,” Foreign Service Journal (Jun 1969)

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“The American Economy: Its Substance and Myth” (1949)

A nuclear war does not defend a country and it does not defend a system. I’ve put it the same way many times; not even the most accomplished ideologue will be able to tell the difference between the ashes of capitalism and the ashes of communism.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism,” interview (undated) with John M. Whiteley in Quest for Peace: an Introduction (1986)

There is something uniquely obscene about competition to promote weapons of mass destruction for the purposes of improving the stock market position of a corporation.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“The Big Defense Firms are Really Public Firms and Should Be Nationalized,” The New York Times Magazine (16 Nov 1969)

Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

“The United States,” New York magazine (15 Nov 1971)

Who’d have thought we were fighting this war against a bunch of jerks.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

(Attributed, 1946)

On seeing the line-up of Nazi war criminals accused at Nuremburg. In Alex Ross, "Watching for a Judgment of Real Evil," New York Times (12 Nov 1995)

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

(Attributed)

The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary; no economist should be denied it, and not many are.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

A Life in Our Times, ch. 11 (1981)

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

A Life in Our Times, ch. 22 (1981)

Variant: "Under capitalism, man exploits man. And under Communism it is just the reverse."Galbraith refers to it as an old Polish joke.

Television newsmen are breathless on how the game is being played, largely silent on what the game is all about.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

A Life in Our Times, ch. 3 (1981)

Then the shit hit the fan.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Ambassador’s Journal (1969)

Galbraith claims to have coined this phrase (see A Life In Our Times (1981))

Where humor is concerned there are no standards — no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Annals of an Abiding Liberal (1979)

The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement.  It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Annals of an Abiding Liberal, ch. 6 (1979)

People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development — the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example — they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Economic Development (1964)

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Economics and the Public Purpose, Introduction (1973)

The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, ch. 1 (1975)

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, ch. 13 “The Self Inflicted Wounds” (1975)

Sometimes misquoted as "... by spectacular error".

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

New York Times Magazine (7 Jun 1970)

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Affluent Society, ch. 11, sec. 4 (1958)

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Affluent Society, ch. 2, sec. 4 (1958)

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 12 (1977)

Do not be alarmed by simplification; complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty (BBC TV) (1977)

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 1 (1977)

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 10 (1977)

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 2 (1977)

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 3 “The Massive Dissent of Karl Marx” (1977)

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 3 (1977)

The myth that holds that the great corporation is the puppet of the market, the powerless servant of the consumer, is, in fact one of the devices by which its power is perpetuated.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 9 (1977)

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Age of Uncertainty, Chapter 1, (1977)

Long run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Great Crash, 1929, ch. 10 “Cause and Consequence” (1954)

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 (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Great Crash, 1929, Introduction, Sec. 1 (1954)

We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Guardian (20 Nov 1991)

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Guardian (23 May 1992)

There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Guardian (23 May 1992)

The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations. … But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Guardian (25 May 1992)

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Guardian (28 Jul 1989)

Also attributed to Clarence Darrow.

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Guardian (28 Jul 1989)

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Guardian (28 Jul 1989)

That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The New Industrial State, ch. 12, sec. 1, (1967)

There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The New Industrial State, ch. 18, sec. 5 (1967)

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

The Sydney Morning Herald (22 May 1982)

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Conversation with author, Charles Frankel, High on Foggy Bottom (1969)

Referring to the US State Department.

When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble – until the day of disaster.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

In B. Laurance, W. Keegan, “Galbraith on crashes, Japan and Walking Sticks”, The Observer (21 Jun 1998)

The worst policy is one made in secrecy by the experts.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

In Michael Leapman, Times (London) (17 Jun 1971)

I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula. There are some things where the government is absolutely inevitable, which we cannot get along without comprehensive state action. But there are many things — producing consumer goods, producing a wide range of entertainment, producing a wide level of cultural activity — where the market system, which independent activity is also important, so I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I’m for that. Where the government is necessary, I’m for that. I’m deeply suspicious of somebody who says, “I’m in favor of privatization,” or, “I’m deeply in favor of public ownership.” I’m in favor of whatever works in the particular case.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Interview with Brian Lamb, Booknotes, C-SPAN (13 Nov 1994)
    (Source)

One must always have in mind one simple fact — there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Interview with John Newark (1990)

Recessions catch what the auditors miss.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Interview with Robert Cornwell, The Independent (1 Jul 2002)

Full text.

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

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author

Letter to Pres. Kennedy (3 Mar 1962)

Quoted in Galbraith, Ambassador’s Journal (1969).