“There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.”

—  John Kenneth Galbraith, book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XVIII, Section 5, p. 208

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 "There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and si…" by John Kenneth Galbraith?
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
John Kenneth Galbraith207
American economist and diplomat 1908–2006

Related quotes

Erving Goffman photo

“I mean this report to serve as a sort of handbook detailing one sociological perspective from which social life can be studied, especially the kind of social life that is organised within the physical confines of a building or plant. A set of features will be described which together form a framework that can be applied to any concrete social establishment, be it domestic, industrial, or commercial.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Preface, lead paragraph
1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959

Ted Koppel photo

“This is an industry, it's a business. We exist to make money. We exist to put commercials on the air. The programming that is put on between those commercials is simply the bait we put in the mousetrap.”

Ted Koppel (1940) television journalist

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/tv/mmx-0511200452nov20,0,991635.story?coll=mmx-television_heds

Thomas Carlyle photo

“Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Woodrow Wilson photo

“This war, in its inception was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech at the Coliseum in St. Louis, Missouri, on the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations (5 September 1919), as published in "The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Authorized Edition) War and Peace: Presidential Messages, Addresses, and Public Papers (1917-1924) by Woodrow Wilson Volume I Page 638. Addresses Delivered by President Wilson on his Western Tour - September 4 To September 25, 1919. From 66th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document No. 120
1910s

Norman Angell photo

“The more our commercial system gains in complication, the more does the common prosperity of us all come to depend upon the due performance of all contracts. Commercial development is broadly illustrating one profound truth: that the real basis of social morality is self-interest. If the subject of rivalry between nations is business, the code which has come to dominate business must necessarily come to dominate the conduct of governments.”

Norman Angell book The Great Illusion

The Great Illusion (1910)

Henri Alexis Brialmont photo

“The best way to create opportunities is to send, from time to time, expeditions to countries with which there is a chance to establish commercial relations.”

Henri Alexis Brialmont (1821–1903) Belgian military engineer and writer (1821-1903)

Source: All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), 5. A prospectus by the military Chazal and Brialmont, The military centipede Henri-Alexis Brialmont (1821-1893) http://www.ethesis.net/leopold_II/leopold_II.htm#2.%20 Brialmont and Leopold II speculate on controlling multiple trading posts, which would be more beneficial than a Colony under economic liberalism. BRIALMONT, H.A. Completion of the work of 1830: establishments to be created in the transatlantic countries: future of Belgian commerce and industry. Brussel, 1860, 65-66.

Gillian Flynn photo

“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“We will indulge in all those miscellaneous commercial operations, which when conducted on a small scale are called thieving, but a large scale, financing.”

Henry Savile Clarke (1841–1893)

Hugger-Mugger

“To conduct of government business… [is similar to the] conduct of the affairs of any other social organization, commercial, philanthropic, religious, or educational, in all of which good management is recognized as an element essential to success.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

Source: Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 1926, p. 5

Leopold II of Belgium photo

“Trading posts and colonies, gentlemen, have not only strengthened the commercial positions of the peoples concerned; these nations owe their greatness to these institutions.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Source: Leopold II, Het hele Verhaal, Johan Op De Beeck Horizon, 2020 https://klara.be/leopold-ii-aflevering-2-0 ISBN 9789463962094 Prince Leopold II in his function of Senator in the Senate of Belgium.

Related topics