110+ John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes On Government, Immigration And Capitalism

John Kenneth Galbraith was an American economist who was a key figure in the advancement of 20th-century American liberalism. He was a prolific author who wrote several books on economic topics, including The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State. Galbraith was a Keynesian economist who believed in the use of government intervention to promote economic growth and stability. Following is our collection on famous quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith on government, immigration, capitalism.

Top 10 John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

1. The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
2. Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.
3. Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
4. But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple.
5. There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
6. Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
7. The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
8. More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
9. Every corner of the public psyche is canvassed by some of the most talented citizens to see if the desire for some merchandisable product can be cultivated.
10. Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage.

John Kenneth Galbraith Image Quotes

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. — John Kenneth Galbraith

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Short Quotes

• All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
• The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
• The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
• Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
• Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?
• The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
• Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
• The spirit should never grow old.
• A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.
• The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce.

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About Government

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, 'I'm in favor of privatization,' or, 'I'm deeply in favor of public ownership.' I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A very complicated mass of things influences the economy - the speculative effect, government policy, consumer borrowing and spending, the level of technical innovation (which I concede, although everyone emphasizes it too much), and much more - including, of course, the rate of inflation. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Those who yearn for the end of capitalism should pray for government by men who believe that all positive action is inimical to what they call thoughtfully the fundamental principles of free enterprise. — John Kenneth Galbraith

One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Nothing so weakens government as persistent inflation. — John Kenneth Galbraith

No intelligence system can predict what a government will do if it doesn't know itself. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About Capitalism

No solution [to the problem of poverty] is so effective as providing income to the poor. Whether in the form of food, housing, health services, education or money, income is an excellent antidote for deprivation. No truth has spawned so much ingenious evasion. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it by consuming its products. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In all modern depressions, recessions, or growth-correction, as variously they are called, we never miss the goods that are not produced. We miss only the opportunities for the labour - for the jobs - that are not provided. — John Kenneth Galbraith

THE GENIUS of the industrial system lies in its organized use of capital and technology. This is made possible, as we have duly seen, by extensively replacing the market with planning. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I begin with the renaming of the system. It used to be capitalism. But that evokes [Karl] Marx and [John] Rockefeller. So now we speak of the market system. That is a nice bland expression, which forgets those off-color references. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Few economic problems, if any, are difficult of solution. The difficulty, all but invariably, is in confronting them. We know what needs to be done; for reasons of inertia, pecuniary interest, passion or ignorance, we do not wish to say so. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About Love

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Of late I have searched diligently to discover the advantages of age, and there is, I have concluded, only one. It is that lovely women treat your approaches with understanding rather than with disdain. — John Kenneth Galbraith

That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture. — John Kenneth Galbraith

SOME YEARS, like some poets,and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About Society

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Things that come from the private sector are in abundant supply; things that depend on the public sector are widely a problem. We're a world, as I said in The Affluent Society, of filthy streets and clean houses, poor schools and expensive television. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that create the wants. — John Kenneth Galbraith

No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The income men derive from producing things of slight consequence is of great consequence. The production reflects the low marginal utility of the goods to society. The income reflects the high total utility of a livelihood to a person. — John Kenneth Galbraith

[The] men of the technostructure are the new and universal priesthood. Their religion is business success; their test of virtue is growth and profit. Their bible is the computer printout; their communion bench is the committee room. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About People

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. — John Kenneth Galbraith

People are the common denominator of progress; no improvement is possible with unimproved people. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything. — John Kenneth Galbraith

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence. — John Kenneth Galbraith

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth. Aspirin does little but dull pain. Alcohol is important mostly for making people more or less drunk ... There being so little to be said, much is to be invented. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About Economics

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

The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, the majority is always wrong. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. — John Kenneth Galbraith

To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics). — John Kenneth Galbraith

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the conventional wisdom of conservatives, the modern search for security is regularly billed as the greatest single threat to economic progress. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About States

More die in the United States from too much food that from too little. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility. — John Kenneth Galbraith

We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction. — John Kenneth Galbraith

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too. — John Kenneth Galbraith

From the spring of 1941, I controlled all prices in the United States. You could lower a price without my permission, but you couldn't raise a price without my permission or that of my staff. — John Kenneth Galbraith

What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Poverty" Pitt exclaimed "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States it is not annoying but it is a disgrace. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About Politics

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If a man didn't make sense, the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation, for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Some things were never meant to be recycled. — John Kenneth Galbraith

One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Third party politics, at least since La Follette, has always had an element of romance. — John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith Famous Quotes And Sayings

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. — John Kenneth Galbraith

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little. — John Kenneth Galbraith

What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, for increasing sensual pleasure and enhancing caloric intake above any conceivable nutritional requirement. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Wisdom... is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The family which takes it mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence. — John Kenneth Galbraith

All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems. — John Kenneth Galbraith

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect. — John Kenneth Galbraith

At best, in such depression times, monetary policy is a feeble reed on which to lean. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process. — John Kenneth Galbraith

No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I am for a close global association in trade and financial matters, rather than the opposite possibility of excessive nationalism, as manifested in the two world wars. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. — John Kenneth Galbraith

We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down. — John Kenneth Galbraith

We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography? — John Kenneth Galbraith

In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed. — John Kenneth Galbraith

A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . . — John Kenneth Galbraith

Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The American colonies, all know, were greatly opposed to taxation without representation. They were also, a less celebrated quality, equally opposed to taxation with representation. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Life Lessons by John Kenneth Galbraith

1. John Kenneth Galbraith taught the importance of understanding the complexities of economics and how it affects society. He also emphasized the need for governments to regulate markets in order to ensure the wellbeing of all citizens.
2. Galbraith believed that the power of economics should be used to create a just and equitable society, and he advocated for the use of government intervention to reduce poverty and inequality.
3. He also argued that economic growth should be used to improve the quality of life for all citizens, not just the wealthy.