Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

“Faced with the choice between changing ones mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

“Meetings are indispensable when you dont want to do anything.”

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of mans oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

“We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action, of the machine we have created to serve us”

“these are the days when men... seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.”

“Criticizing these reporters is like booing at the special olympics.”

“To demand of love that it be without jealousy is to ask of light that it cast no shadows.”

Wisdom, itself, is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion.

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.

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.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

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.

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

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.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

Let it be emphasized once more, and especially to anyone inclined to a personally rewarding skepticism in these matters: for practical purposes, the financial memory should be assumed to last, at a maximum, no more than 20 years. This is normally the time it takes for the recollection of one disaster to be erased and for some variant on previous dementia to come forward to capture the financial mind. It is also the time generally required for a new generation to enter the scene, impressed, as had been its predecessors, with its own innovative genius.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.