Quotes from John Kenneth Galbraith

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.

Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.

Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.

Men of conservative temperament have long suspected that one thing leads to another.

The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man's oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities.

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

The income men derive from producing things of slight consequence is of great consequence to them.

I would now, however, more strongly emphasize, and especially as to the United States, the inequality in income and that it is getting worse—that the poor remain poor and the command of income by those in the top income brackets is increasing egregiously. So is the political eloquence and power by which that income is defended. This I did not foresee.

In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth.

The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously and sententiously about the relation of money supply to the price level-is easy for the unlearned and may even be aided by a mildly enfeebled intellect. The requirement that there be ability to master difficult models, including ones for which mathematical competence is required, is a highly useful screening device.

None of this excuses anyone from mastering the basic ideas and terminology of economics. The intelligent layman must expect also to encounter good economists who are difficult writers even though some of the best have been very good writers. He should know, moreover, that at least for a few great men ambiguity of expression has been a positive asset. But with these exceptions he may safely conclude that what is wholly mysterious in economics is not likely to be important.

To proclaim the need for new ideas has served, in some measure, as a substitute for them.

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

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

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness... & ... Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative. –

The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience.

The process by which wants are now synthesized is a potential source of economic instability. Production and therewith employment and social security are dependent on an inherently unstable process of consumer debt creation. This may one day falter.

Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.

There is nothing reliable to be learned about making money. If there were, study would be intense and everyone with a positive IQ would be rich.

Recurrent descent into insanity is not a wholly attractive feature of capitalism.

The second factor contributing to speculative euphoria and programmed collapse is the specious association of money and intelligence.

The process by which money is created is so simply that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent.

Fools, as it has long been said, are indeed separated, soon or eventually, from their money. So, alas, are those who, responding to a general mood of optimism, are captured by a sense of their own financial acumen. Thus it has been for centuries; thus in the long future it will also be.