“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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." by John Kenneth Galbraith?
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
John Kenneth Galbraith 207
American economist and diplomat 1908–2006

Related quotes

Warren Buffett photo

“Production functions involving only land, labor and capital… never work and never explain economic development.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1990). "Taxonomy as a Source of Error." in Methodus Vol 2. p. 17-21, as cited in: Deirdre McCloskey (2013) " What Boulding Said Went Wrong with Economics, A Quarter Century On http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/editorials/boulding.php"
1990s and attributed

Jayant Narlikar photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“Writers are not, by nature, respectable: their function is to be subversive.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 162

Joseph Campbell photo

“Economics is itself a function of aspiration. It’s what people aspire to that creates the field in which economics works.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Lecture 1B, 8:20
Mythology and the Individual (1997)
Context: All cultures … have grown out of myths. They are founded on myths. What these myths have given has been inspiration for aspiration. The economic interpretation of history is for the birds. Economics is itself a function of aspiration. It’s what people aspire to that creates the field in which economics works.

Ted Malloch photo

“There’s such a thing as spiritual capital that has economic function and potential.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 15.

Karl Polanyi photo

“The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization.”

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 4 : Societies and Economic Systems

Related topics