John Kenneth Galbraith: Trending quotes (page 5)

“This view that the action of the Federal Reserve authorities in 1927 was responsible for the speculation and collapse which followed has never been seriously shaken. There are reasons why it is attractive. It is simple, and it exonerates both the American people and the economic system from substantial blame… Yet the explanation obviously assumes that people will always speculate if only they can get the money to finance it. Nothing could be farther from the case. There were times before and there has been long periods since when credit was plentiful and cheap -- far cheaper than in 1927-29 -- and when speculation was negligible. Nor was speculation out of control after 1927, except that it was beyond the reach of men who did not want in the least to control it. The explanation is a tribute only to a recurrent preference, in economic matters, for formidable nonsense.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

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

Men , Money , People , Time

“The masters thought they were loved until one day one of their favorites farted loudly while serving dinner and the next day was gone. The very first manifestation of the classless society is the disappearance of the servant class.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 2, p. 62

Love

“Going back to the most ancient times, national well-being, the national prestige depended on territory. The more territory a country had, the more income revenue there was, the more people there were to be mobilized for arms strength. So we had an enormous sense of territorial conflict and territorial integrity, and that was unquestionably a part of the cause of war, coupled with the fact that there was a disposition in that direction by the landed class, a disposition to think of territorial acquisition and territorial defense and to think of the peasantry as a superior form of livestock which could be used for arms purposes.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Booknotes interview (1994)

War , People , Thinking , Sense

“In accordance with an old but not outworn tradition, it might now be wise for all to conclude that crime, or even misbehavior, is the act of an individual, not the predisposition of a class.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section VI, p 165
The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

“Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 19, Section V, p. 218

“The decisive weakness in neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economics is not the error in the assumptions by which it elides the problem of power. The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience. Rather, in eliding power — in making economics a nonpolitical subject — neoclassical theory destroys its relation to the real world. In that world, power is decisive in what happens. And the problems of that world are increasing both in number and in the depth of their social affliction. In consequence, neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economics is relegating its players to the social sidelines where they either call no plays or use the wrong ones. To change the metaphor, they manipulate levers to which no machinery is attached.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Power and the Useful Economist (1973)

World , Error , Problem , Decision

“You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Quoted in conversation with Charles Frankel, High on Foggy Bottom: an outsider's inside view of the Government (1969), p. 11

“Those who yearn for the end of capitalism should pray for government by men who believe that all positive action is inimical to what they call thoughtfully the fundamental principles of free enterprise.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XXI, Afterword, p. 312

Men

“Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

"The Convenient Reverse of Logic in Our Time," commencement address, American University (1984); reprinted in A View from the Stands (1986)

Time

“He enlarged perceptibly the scope for debate, liberalized appreciably the intellectual and cultural life of the country and proclaimed the obvious truth that, after an atomic exchange, little would distinguish the Communist ashes from the capitalist ashes.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 8, p. 245 (on Nikita Khrushchev)

Life , Truth , Country

“Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Attributed without source
Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975)

Money , People

“However, Hoover had converted the simple business ritual of reassurance into a major instrument of public policy.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section I, p 144
The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Business

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

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 1, Section I, p. 13

Wealth

“In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter I, Section 3, p. 6

Change

“Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter IX, The Price, p. 106

“Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXVIII, Section 3, p. 321

“Hitler also anticipated modern economic policy... by recognizing that a rapid approach to full employment was only possible if it was combined with wage and price controls. That a nation oppressed by economic fear would respond to Hitler as Americans did to F. D. R. is not surprising.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

As quoted in Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1991), by John Toland, also quoted in "Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II (1995) by Jacob G. Hornberger http://www.fff.org/freedom/0795a.asp

Fear

“To a few alarmed observers it seemed as though Wall Street were by way of devouring all the money of the entire world. However, in accordance with the cultural practice, as the summer passed, the sound and responsible spokesmen decried not the increase in brokers' loans, but those who insisted on attaching significance to this trend.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

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

Money , World , Way , Summer

“There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

The Guardian [UK] (23 May 1992)

Love , Parting

“The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 2, Section IV, p. 21

Wisdom , Idea