Top 300 John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

2. “No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

3. “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

4. “The problem of the modern economy is not a failure of a knowledge of economics; it’s a failure of a knowledge of history.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

5. “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

6. “In economics, the majority is always wrong.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

7. “Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

8. “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

9. “The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

10. “Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

11. “People are the common denominator of progress; no improvement is possible with unimproved people.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

12. “Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

13. “A wrong decision isn’t forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

14. “Banking may well be a career from which no man really recovers.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

15. “Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

16. “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

17. “Only foolish people are completely secure.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

18. “War remains the decisive human failure.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

19. “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

20. “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

21. “When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

22. “In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

23. “Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

24. “There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

25. “The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

26. “It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast – even the English can’t do it.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

27. “In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

28. “Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

29. “We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

30. “The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

31. “Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

32. “The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

33. “In public administration good sense would seem to require the public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize the eventual disappointment.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

34. “Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

35. “Genius is a rising stock market.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

36. “Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

37. “Simple minds, presumably, are the easiest to manage.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

38. “I think without a doubt, that what is called “financial genius” is merely a rising market.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

39. “The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

40. “Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

41. “In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

42. “One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

43. “Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

44. “The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

45. “Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that create the wants.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

46. “If you’re rich you can buy books. If you’re poor, you need a library.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

48. “Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

49. “Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy – what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith

50. “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.”

— John Kenneth Galbraith