Works
The Great Crash, 1929
John Kenneth Galbraith
The New Industrial State
John Kenneth Galbraith
The Affluent Society
John Kenneth Galbraith
The Culture of Contentment
John Kenneth GalbraithFamous John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
“More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.”
Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 9, Section II, p. 103
“If all else fails immortality can always be assured by adequate error.”
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XIII, The Self Inflicted Wounds, p. 176
John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes about people
The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)
BBC TV Adaptation, Episode 1
The Age of Uncertainty (1977)
“People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.”
The Guardian [UK] (23 May 1992)
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 6, p. 161
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 1, p. 22
"H.L. Mencken," The Washington Post (14 September 1980); reprinted in A View from the Stands (1986)
John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes about money
“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter III, Banks, p. 18
The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)
“A constant in the history of money is that every remedy is reliably a source of new abuse.”
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter II, Of Coins and Treasure
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter V, The Twilight of Illusion, Section I, p. 68
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter IV, The Bank, p. 30
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, "Vision and Boundless Hope and Optimism" p. 10
John Kenneth Galbraith: Trending quotes
“The first goal of the technostructure is its own security.”
Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXIII, Section 2, p. 265
Power and the Useful Economist (1973)
Context: This is what economics now does. It tells the young and susceptible (and also the old and vulnerable) that economic life has no content of power and politics because the firm is safely subordinate to the market and the state and for this reason it is safely at the command of the consumer and citizen. Such an economics is not neutral. It is the influential and invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public. If the state is the executive committee of the great corporation and the planning system, it is partly because neoclassical economics is its instrument for neutralizing the suspicion that this is so.
“Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account.”
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter VII, Things Become More Serious, Section VIII, p. 131-132
Context: Clerks in downtown hotels were said to be asking guests whether they wished the room for sleeping or jumping. Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account.
John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
“When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover.”
As quoted in "Galbraith on crashes, Japan and Walking Sticks" by Ben Laurance and William Keegan, in The Observer (21 June 1998)
Context: When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble — until the day of disaster.
“People are the common denominator of progress.”
Economic Development (1964), ch. 2
Context: People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development — the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example — they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.
“To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise.”
Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXI, Section 2, p. 236
"The American Economy: Its Substance and Myth," quoted in Years of the Modern (1949), edited by J.W. Chase
Context: In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.
Power and the Useful Economist (1973)
Context: When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality. The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error. The beneficiaries are the institutions whose power we so disguise. Let there be no question: economics, so long as it is thus taught, becomes, however unconsciously, a part of the arrangement by which the citizen or student is kept from seeing how he or she is, or will be, governed.
“To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.”
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter VIII, The Great Compromise, p. 90
Context: In numerous years following the war the Federal government ran a heavy surplus. It could not pay off it's debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.
“All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.”
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 3, "The Massive Dissent of Karl Marx" p. 96
Context: 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.
“Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain.”
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 7, p. 211
Context: Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
The Guardian [UK] (23 May 1992)
Context: 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.
Booknotes interview (1994)
Context: I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula. There are some things where the government is absolutely inevitable, which we cannot get along without comprehensive state action. But there are many things — producing consumer goods, producing a wide range of entertainment, producing a wide level of cultural activity — where the market system, which independent activity is also important, so I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, "I'm in favor of privatization," or, "I'm deeply in favor of public ownership." I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case.
The United States (1971)
Context: The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process. However, a more 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.
Source: The Culture of Contentment (1992), Ch. 13
Foreword to The Beach Book by Gloria Steinem (1963); reprinted in Galbraith's A View from the Stands (1986)
Context: 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.
“I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula.”
Booknotes interview (1994)
Context: I react to what is necessary. I would like to eschew any formula. There are some things where the government is absolutely inevitable, which we cannot get along without comprehensive state action. But there are many things — producing consumer goods, producing a wide range of entertainment, producing a wide level of cultural activity — where the market system, which independent activity is also important, so I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, "I'm in favor of privatization," or, "I'm deeply in favor of public ownership." I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case.
“Stop the Madness,” Interview with Rupert Cornwell, Toronto Globe and Mail (6 July 2002) (see http://wist.info/galbraith-john-kenneth/7463/ )
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”
Though often attributed to Galbraith, as early as 1988 in U.S. News & World Report, the earliest publications of this statement, in The Bulletin (1984) and Reader's Digest (1985) attributes it to Ezra Solomon.
Misattributed
“Under capitalism, man exploits man; while under socialism just the reverse is true.”
Source: A Life in Our Times
Economics, Peace and Laughter (1971), p. 50
"Recession Economics," New York Review of Books, Volume 29, Number 1 (4 February 1982)
Context: Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy— what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.
“Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.”
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 2, p. 44
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter X, Cause and Consequence, p. 199
Interview with John Newark (1990) from Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith (2004), ed. James Ronald Stanfield and Jacqueline Bloom Stanfield
Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 23, Section VI, p. 258
Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXIV, Section 1, p. 275
Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XIII, Section 1, p. 149
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, A Year To Remember, p. 1
"Corporate Man," The New York Times (22 January 1984)
Introduction, Section I, p. x
Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)
“Meetings are a great trap. … they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.”
Ambassador's Journal (1969), p. 84 http://books.google.com/books?id=J1NCAAAAIAAJ&q="meetings+are+a+great+trap"+"they+are+indispensable+when+you+don't+want+to+do+anything"&pg=PA84#v=onepage
“Economics is not an exact science.”
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 1, p. 36
“The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it becameNew York, London or Tokyo.”
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 11, p. 323
Foreword p. x
The Affluent Society (1958)
The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 12, p. 324
“With the American failure came world failure.”
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XX, Where It Went, p. 293
“Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.”
Interview with Lorie Conway (1997) from Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith (2004) ed. James Ronald Stanfield and Jacqueline Bloom Stanfield. Conway saw these words on a framed needlepoint, entitled "Galbraith's First Law," at Galbraith's home
Chapter VI https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Things Become More Serious, Section IV, p 115
The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)
The New York Times Magazine (7 June 1970)
Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VII, Section 2, p. 76
“Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result.”
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XIV, When The Money Stopped, p. 192
“If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement.”
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 5, p. 137
The United States (1971)
Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXXI, Section 1, p. 354
Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 13, Section V, p. 155
Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 5, p. 133
Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 12, Section VII, p. 145
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter X, The Impeccable System, p. 118
