458 Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.

[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.

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

The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant.

I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, and the schools so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut.

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. . .

It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.

Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.

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