People Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Nothing is more portable than rich people and their money

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Only foolish people are completely secure.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

It is possible that people need to believe they are unmanaged if they are to be managed effectively.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

We have a swarm of people in the stock market - not out of knowledge, not out of expectation, but out of…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth. Aspirin does little but…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

If anything is evident about people who manage money, it is that the task attracts a very low level of talent, one…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

I was in charge of price controls in World War II and had a ceiling on overall prices. Everybody who was subject…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Get the process of negotiation away from the small specialized group that some people have called the "nuclear theologians" ... Only a…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

People are the common denominator of progress. So... no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857,…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Over the span of man's history, although a phenomenal amount of education, persuasion, indoctrination and incantation have been devoted to the effort,…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

The ideas by which people . . . interpret their existence and in measure guide their behavior, were not forged in a world of wealth.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Men will look back in amusement at the pretence that once caused people to refer to General Dynamics and North American Aviation…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Foreign policy is conducted for the convenience and enjoyment of people in Washington.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Perhaps never before or since have so many people taken the measure of economic prospects and found them so favorable as in…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

The years of the Great Depression were a superb time for economists because people not knowing what could be done or what…

— John Kenneth Galbraith