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
The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.
Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations.
American university presidents are a nervous breed; I have never thought well of them as a class.
In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.
In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.
It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.
The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future.
Power is as power does.
No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousand shares of General Motors or General Electric.
Nothing in our time is more interesting than the erstwhile capitalist corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under the imperatives of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members.
Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.
If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.
We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action of the machine we have created to serve us.
The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses.