Quotes from John Kenneth Galbraith

Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards.

Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.

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.

Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.

Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.

I do the best with what exists.

The spirit should never grow old.

A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.

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

When everything else failed, we can still become immortal by making an enormous blunder.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

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

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.

The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.

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.

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

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great -- a little understood thing.

War remains the decisive human failure.

Then the shit hit the fan.

But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple.

Men can labor to make sense out of single steps toward the goal without ever pausing to reflect that the goal itself is ludicrous.

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

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.