John Galbraith Quotations

Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

Several times I concluded that there was too much detail; always I returned to continue and enjoy the book.

On the first of January of 1929, as a simple matter of probability, it was most likely that the boom would end before the year was out, ... The market wouldn't level out; it would fall precipitately.

The overwhelming idea I would like to see is some end in Washington to this enormous preoccupation with sex, as it gives an opening for speech to anybody who's had any experience with it,

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put on the troubled seas of thought.

Wisdom itself is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion

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

We are on the edge of a total end to civilized existenceon this planet, perhaps the end of life itself.

When people are the least sure, they are often the most dogmatic

Few things are more tempting to a writer than to repeat, admiringly, what he has said before

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

The total alteration in underlying circumstances has not been squarely faced, As a result, we are guided, in part, by ideas that are relevant to another world. ... We do many things that are unnecessary, some that are unwise, and a few that are insane.

The traveler to the United States will do well to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.

these are the days when men... seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.

Production only fills a void that it has itself created

An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. 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.

Once the visitor was told rather repetitively that this city was the melting pot; never before in history had so many people of such varied languages, customs, colors and culinary habits lived so amicably together. Although New York remains peaceful by most standards, this self-congratulation is now less often heard, since it was discovered some years ago that racial harmony depended unduly on the willingness of the blacks (and latterly the Puerto Ricans) to do for the other races the meanest jobs at the lowest wages and then to return to live by themselves in the worst slums.

The happiest time in any man's life is just after the first divorce

Among all the world's races ... Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not a consequence of any special preference for mendacity.... It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.

a much more concerned look at the problems of the weak economies, particularly the innocent people that are suffering there.