John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes page 2

“However, it is safe to say that at the peak in 1929 the number of active speculators was less — and probably was much less — than a million.”

Interview with John Newark (1990) from Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith (2004) http://aurora.icaap.org/talks/galbraith.htm, ed. James Ronald Stanfield and Jacqueline Bloom Stanfield

“Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.”

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter V, The Twilight of Illusion, Section V, p. 83

“Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.”

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. 130

“Of all the weapons in the Federal Reserve arsenal, words were the the most unpredictable in their consequences.”

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 4, Section IV, p. 45

“Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.”

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter III, Something Should Be Done?, Section IV, p. 38

“Both of these measures were on the side of increasing spendable income, though unfortunately they were largely without effect. The tax reductions were negligible except in the higher income brackets; businessmen who promised to maintain investment and wages, in accordance with a well-understood convention, considered the promise binding only for the period within which it was not financially disadvantageous to do so.”

The United States (1971)

“But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.”

Chapter IX https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Cause and Consequence, Section V, p 183 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXXV, Section 5, p. 398

“Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Foreword p. vii
The New Industrial State (1967)

“Foresight is an imperfect thing — all prevision in economics is imperfect.”

“It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.”

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XIX, The New Economics At High Noon, p. 269

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XIX, Section 4, p. 217

“All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXX, Section 7, p. 353

“Our political tradition sets great store by the generalized symbol of evil. This is the wrongdoer whose wrongdoing will be taken by the public to be the secret propensity of a whole community or class.”

“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.”

Chapter VIII https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Aftermath II, Section IV, p 154 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

“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.”

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

“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.”

Booknotes interview (1994)

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

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)

“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.”

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

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

Power and the Useful Economist (1973)

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

“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.”

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

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

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

“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.”

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

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

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.”

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

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

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

The Guardian [UK] (23 May 1992)

“The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.”

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

“Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell.”

Source: The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 10, p. 293

“No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals.”

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter VI, The Crash, p. 104

“Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.”

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, A Year To Remember, p. 4

“You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.”

The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)

“In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand; the spiral operates when there is too much and also, unfortunately, when there is just enough.”

Speech of Adlai Stevenson, Los Angeles (1956), written by Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXII, Section 4, p. 255

“In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter V, Section 2, p. 49

“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VI, Section 2, p. 62

“Our political life favors the extremes of speech; the man who is gifted in the arts of abuse is bound to be a notable, if not always a great figure.”

“In the early days of the crash it was widely believed that Jesse L. Livermore, a Bostonian with a large and unquestionably exaggerated reputation for bear operations, leading asyndicate that was driving the market down.”

Chapter VI https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Things Become More Serious, Section II, p 110 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

“THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM requires that prices be under effective control. And it seeks the greatest possible influence over what buyers take at the established prices.”

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter VIII, Aftermath I, Section III, p. 141

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XX, Section 1, p. 219 (Caps as per text...)

“Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter IV, Section 2, p. 37

“Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VIII, Section 5, p. 96

“There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.”