John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith, OCwas a Canadianeconomist, public official, and diplomat, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s, during which time Galbraith fulfilled the role of public intellectual. As an economist, he leaned toward Post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth15 October 1908
CountryUnited States of America
John Kenneth Galbraith quotes about
Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.
The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles.
Those who had been riding the upward wave decide now is the time to get out. Those who thought the increase would be forever find their illusion destroyed abruptly, and they, also, respond to the newly revealed reality by selling or trying to sell. And thus the rule, supported by the experience of centuries: the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang.
Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man?
THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM requires that prices be under effective control. And it seeks the greatest possible influence over what buyers take at the established prices.
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.
Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.
That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.
Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.
However, it is safe to say that at the peak in 1929 the number of active speculators was less - and probably was much less - than a million.
Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.
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.
Economic life, as always, is a matrix in which result becomes cause and cause becomes result.