World War II revealed two of the enduring features of the Keynesian Revolution. One was the moral difference between spending for welfare and spending for war. During the Depression very modest outlays for the unemployed seemed socially debilitating, economically unsound. Now expenditures many times greater for weapons and soldiers were perfectly safe. It's a difference that still persists. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share
In Europe and the United States the two decades following the Second World War will for long be remembered as a very good time, the time when capitalism really worked. Everywhere in the industrialized countries production increased. Unemployment was everywhere low. Prices were nearly stable. When production lagged and unemployment rose, governments intervened to take up the slack, as Keynes… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share
I am for a close global association in trade and financial matters, rather than the opposite possibility of excessive nationalism, as manifested… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt was the central world figure in the two great disasters of this century - the Great Depression and World… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
“Men can labor to make sense out of single steps toward the goal without ever pausing to reflect that the goal itself is ludicrous.” — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
World War II revealed two of the enduring features of the Keynesian Revolution. One was the moral difference between spending for welfare and spending for war. During the Depression very modest outlays for the unemployed seemed socially debilitating, economically unsound. Now expenditures many times greater for weapons and soldiers were perfectly safe. It's a difference that still persists. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share
Money is what fueled the industrial society. But in the informational society, the fuel, the power, is knowledge. One has now come to see… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
While it will be desirable to achieve planned results, it will be even more important to avoid unplanned disasters. — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image