Quotes from John Kenneth Galbraith

Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.

The hallmark of the conventional wisdom is acceptability. It has the approval of those to whom it is addressed.

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

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.

The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it by consuming its products.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

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

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

The salary of the chief executive of a 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.

What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, increasing sensual pleasure and for enhancing caloric intake above any nutritional requirement. Nonetheless, the belief that increased production is a worthy social goal is very nearly absolute.

An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

Change comes not from men and women changing their minds, but from the change from one generation to the next.

Few people at the beginning of the ninteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

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

Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.

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.

The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

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