Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
Explore 32 verified and sourced quotes attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
EXPLORE BY TOPIC
Selected quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
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.
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
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.
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
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.
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
In economics, the majority is always wrong.
Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.
Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.
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.
Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.
More quotes attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith are available across the Mayalines library.
Related author collections
Explore authors represented in the same topics.