458 Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.

Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.

Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.

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

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.

Money is what fueled the industrial society. But in the informational society, the fuel, the power, is knowledge. One has now come to see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge.

From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute.

Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.