John Kenneth Galbraith citations (207 citations, Page 3)

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

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre 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 V, p. 83

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre The Great Crash, 1929

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

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre The Affluent Society

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

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

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre The Great Crash, 1929

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

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith

The United States (1971)

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre The Great Crash, 1929

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

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

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre 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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre The New Industrial State

Foreword p. vii
The New Industrial State (1967)

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

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John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre 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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre 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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre The Great Crash, 1929

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

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre 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

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith

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

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith

Booknotes interview (1994)

“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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre The Great Crash, 1929

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

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

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John Kenneth Galbraith livre 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.”

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John Kenneth Galbraith

Power and the Useful Economist (1973)

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

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John Kenneth Galbraith

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