458 Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.

Over the span of man's history, although a phenomenal amount of education, persuasion, indoctrination and incantation have been devoted to the effort, ordinary people have never been quite persuaded that toil is as agreeable as its alternatives. Thus to take increased well-being partly in the form of more goods and partly in the form of more leisure is unquestionably rational.

One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.

Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.

There is wonder and a certain wicked pleasure in these giddy ascents and terrible falls, especially as they happen to other people.

Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.

All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.

This is a world inhabited not by people who have to be persuaded to believe but by people who want an excuse to believe.