John Kenneth Galbraith: Economics

John Kenneth Galbraith was American economist and diplomat. Explore interesting quotes on economics.

John Kenneth Galbraith: 414 quotes1 like

“I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Booknotes interview (1994)

“It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

A Journey Through Economic Time (1994)

“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.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

"Recession Economics," New York Review of Books, Volume 29, Number 1 (4 February 1982)

“More generally, the individual who gets added income as a result of a general inflationary movement atributes it not to larger economic causes but to his own virtue and diligence.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXII, Section 4, p. 263 (1985)

“Nothing so effectively economizes effort and intelligence, as distinct from anxiety, as the knowledge that nothing can be done.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VIII, Section 1, p. 91 (1985)