458 Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit.

Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.

Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied.

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.

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

The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses.

My rule on honorary degrees has always been to have one more than Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.

We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action of the machine we have created to serve us.