Top 100 Galbraith Quotes
#1. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill.
If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.
- Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
The Silkworm
J.K. Rowling
#3. All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.
George Stigler
#4. 20 See the naive characterization of Backe in J. K. Galbraith, 'Germany was Badly Run', Fortune (December 1945), 177.
Anonymous
#6. This theory rapidly became an article of faith because it appealed to the factors that, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, most contribute to the formation of conventional wisdom: the ease with which an idea may be understood and the degree to which it affects our personal well-being.
Steven D. Levitt
#7. Conventional wisdom in Galbraith's view must be simple, convenient, comfortable and comforting - though not necessarily true.
Steven D. Levitt
#8. (Lorelei is accosted by Galbraith.)
If you ever lay hands on what's mine again, as God is my witness, I'll lay you down dead. (Jack)
Kinley MacGregor
#9. John Kenneth Galbraith said: Faced with the choice of changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#10. Economics, n.: Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K. Galbraith ...
Mike Harding
#11. John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced.
Anthony Burgess
#12. So when people ask Galbraith, why is the change in marijuana laws important to the people of this country, because it returns to the people the right to plant a seed in God's earth and consume the green natural plant that comes up out of it.
Gatewood Galbraith
#13. Professor Galbraith is horrified by the number of Americans who have bought cars with tail fins on them, and I am horrified by the number of Americans who take seriously the proposals of Mr. Galbraith.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#14. How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?
Robert Galbraith
#15. He had almost fallen asleep on top of Elin last night, and counted it among the week's few small achievements that he had finished the job, at least.
Robert Galbraith
#16. Strike noticed that, in spite of Duffield's air of disorientation and distress, he had made a good job of applying his eyeliner.
Robert Galbraith
#17. It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#18. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things Virgil, Georgics, Book 2
Robert Galbraith
#21. The Affluent Society not only changed the way the country viewed itself, but gave new phrases to the language: Conventional wisdom, the bland leading the bland, private opulence and public squalor.
Amartya Sen
#22. In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand; the spiral operates when there is too much and also,unfortunately, when there is just enough.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#23. Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.
Robert Galbraith
#24. Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#25. Began to read a piece on how a high street chain of stores had banned Cliff Richard's Christmas songs.
Robert Galbraith
#26. Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#27. Emma Watson in white on the cover of Vogue ("The Super Star Issue"),
Robert Galbraith
#28. And on the menu, it says "bill of fare". They won't use "menu", you see, because it was French.
Robert Galbraith
#29. There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#30. Fancourt can't write women,' said Nina dismissively. 'He tries but he can't do it. His women are all temper, tits and tampons.
Robert Galbraith
#31. Robin did not know why the announcement that Strike was off to meet Elin should lower her spirits.
Robert Galbraith
#32. Strike set out for his office beneath a sky of dirty silver,
Robert Galbraith
#33. Unemployment is rarely considered desirable except by those who have not experienced it.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#34. F or a decade after the bursting of the debt bubble in 1837, business conditions were depressed in the United States. The number of banks available for financing speculative adventures declined. Then, after another 10 years, public memory faded again.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#36. Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.
Robert Galbraith
#37. Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#38. 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
#39. That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#40. If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows (referring to "trickle down" economics).
John Kenneth Galbraith
#41. One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#42. Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#43. The instantaneous shift from calm to calamity. The slowing of time. Every sense suddenly wire-taut and screaming.
Robert Galbraith
#44. The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#45. Matthew kept hinting that Strike was somehow a fake. He seemed to feel that being a private detective was a far-fetched job, like astronaut or lion tamer; that real people did not do such things.
Robert Galbraith
#46. The process by which wants are now synthesized is a potential source of economic instability. Production and therewith employment and social security are dependent on an inherently unstable process of consumer debt creation. This may one day falter.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#47. Judging by the lopsided way she was hunched, with one hand buried deep under the lapel of her coat, Strike deduced that he had saved her by grabbing a substantial part of her left breast.
Robert Galbraith
#48. She thought it might be the very first time that Strike had ever given any indication that he saw her as a woman, and she silently filed away the exchange to pore over later, in solitude.
Robert Galbraith
#50. The State Department desperately needs to be vigorously harnessed. It has too big a role to play in the formulation of foreign policy, and foreign policy is too important to be left up to foreign service officers.
Evan G. Galbraith
#52. But they had already tried, again and again and again, and always, when the first crashing wave of mutual longing subsided, the ugly wreck of the past lay revealed again, its shadow lying darkly over everything they tried to rebuild.
Robert Galbraith
#54. No hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#55. He drank it sitting in Robin's chair, and ate half a packet of digestives,
Robert Galbraith
#58. In spite of her plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance.
Robert Galbraith
#59. She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.
Robert Galbraith
#61. According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#62. But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#63. have sufficiently urged that all suggestions as to financial innovation be regarded with extreme skepticism. Such seeming innovation is merely some variant on an old design, new only in the brief and defective memory of the financial world.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#64. The story, like all the best stories, split like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new stories and opinion pieces and speculative articles, each spawning its own counter chorus.
Robert Galbraith
#65. All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#66. I can measure the motions of bodies," Sir Isaac Newton once observed, "but I cannot measure human folly." Nor could he do so as regards his own. He was to lose
John Kenneth Galbraith
#67. Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#68. Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#71. A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#74. It is possible that people need to believe they are unmanaged if they are to be managed effectively.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#75. Strike had recently helped several wealthy young women rid themselves of City husbands who had become much less attractive to them since the financial crash. There was something appealing about restoring a husband to a wife, for a change.
Robert Galbraith
#76. Sense entered into a short, violent skirmish with instinct and inclination, and was overwhelmed.
Robert Galbraith
#78. Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#81. the kettle boiled in its usual crescendo of rattling lid and rambunctious bubbles, condensation steaming up the window behind it.
Robert Galbraith
#82. I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#83. No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#84. People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#85. It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#86. By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#87. Holly was playing the concerned relative, the devoted sister, and if it was a ham performance Robin was experienced enough, now, to know that there were usually nuggets of truth to be sifted from even the most obvious dross.
Robert Galbraith
#89. Perhaps never before or since have so many people taken the measure of economic prospects and found them so favorable as in the two days following the Thursday [24th October 1929] disaster.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#90. He's a writer," she said, as though this explained everything. "He's disappeared before?" "He's emotional," she said, her expression glum. "He's always going off on one, but it's been ten days and I know he's really upset but I need him home now.
Robert Galbraith
#91. Experience had taught Strike that there was a certain type of woman to whom he was unusually attractive. Their common characteristics were intelligence and the flickering intensity of badly wired lamps.
Robert Galbraith
#92. But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#93. In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#94. There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#95. 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
#96. In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#97. One must always have in mind one simple fact - there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#98. Like other inveterate womanizers Strike had encountered, Duffield's voice and mannerisms were slightly camp. Perhaps such men became feminized by prolonged immersion in women's company, or perhaps it was a way of disarming their quarry.
Robert Galbraith
#100. He had spent much of his childhood perched on the coast, with the taste of salt in the air: this was a place of woodland and river, mysterious and secretive in a different way from St. Mawes, the little town with its long smuggling history, where colorful houses tumbled down to the beach.
Robert Galbraith
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