Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith

American economist

Lived from: 1908 - 2006

Category: Business and entrepreneurs Country: FlagUnited States

Born: 15 october 1908 Died: 29 april 2006

  • The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
  • 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.
  • Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
  • If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
  • In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.
+5

Quotes 1 till 20 of 48.

1 2 3 Next 
  • Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
    +1
  • In the affluent society no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
    +1
  • One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
    +1
  • Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
    +1
  • All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • 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.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • 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
    - +
     0
  • In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • In economics the majority is always wrong.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put on the troubled seas of thought.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • 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.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
  • Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
    ― John Kenneth Galbraith
    - +
     0
1 2 3 Next 
All John Kenneth Galbraith famous quotes and sayings you will always find on greatest-quotations.com

Popular subjects

Popular authors

Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from John Kenneth Galbraith?

The two most famous quotes from John Kenneth Galbraith are:

  • "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists."
  • "In the affluent society no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries."

When did John Kenneth Galbraith live?

John Kenneth Galbraith was born in 1908 and died in the year 2006.