A banker need not be popular; indeed a good banker in a healthy capitalist society should probably be much disliked. People do not wish to trust their money to a hail-fellow-well-met but to a misanthrope who can say no. John Kenneth Galbraith
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
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. John Kenneth Galbraith
Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay. 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
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. John Kenneth Galbraith
Economists are most economical about ideas. They make the ones they learned in graduate school last a lifetime. 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
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
I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people. John Kenneth Galbraith
Ideology is just an escape from thought. John Kenneth Galbraith
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. John Kenneth Galbraith
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. 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
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. John Kenneth Galbraith
In economics, the majority is always wrong. John Kenneth Galbraith
In our society the solemn person inspires far more trust than the one who laughs. John Kenneth Galbraith
In the really hard cases you’re choosing between the disastrous and the catastrophic, and it’s hard to tell someone which one is which. John Kenneth Galbraith
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes. John Kenneth Galbraith
Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything. John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith quotes
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue. 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
More die in the United States of too much food than of too little. John Kenneth Galbraith
Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom. John Kenneth Galbraith
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. John Kenneth Galbraith
Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell. John Kenneth Galbraith
Only men of considerable vanity write books. John Kenneth Galbraith
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy. John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. John Kenneth Galbraith
Progress in this subject [economics] is measured by the speed of the return to the ideas of the eighteenth century. John Kenneth Galbraith
The best place to write is by yourself, because writing becomes an escape from the terrible boredom of your own personality. John Kenneth Galbraith
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. John Kenneth Galbraith
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. John Kenneth Galbraith
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. John Kenneth Galbraith
The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed. John Kenneth Galbraith
The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. 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
There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know. John Kenneth Galbraith
There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting. John Kenneth Galbraith
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth. John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith quotes
There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars. John Kenneth Galbraith
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite. John Kenneth Galbraith
We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect. 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
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence. John Kenneth Galbraith
When people are the least sure, they are often the most dogmatic. John Kenneth Galbraith
Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out? John Kenneth Galbraith