“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
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John Kenneth Galbraith 207
American economist and diplomat 1908–2006Related quotes

1992 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1992.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)
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
Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 16

“Writers are not, by nature, respectable: their function is to be subversive.”
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

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

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.

“There’s such a thing as spiritual capital that has economic function and potential.”
Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 15.

“The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization.”
The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 4 : Societies and Economic Systems