Quotes By 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.

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

Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.

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

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

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

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

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

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.

Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.

Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

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

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.

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

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.

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.

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.

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

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.

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.

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

Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.