John Kenneth Galbraith

Educators have yet to realize how deeply the industrial system is dependent upon them.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

Excessive acreages of unused buildings, commercial and residential were created. The need for such construction, given the space demands of modern business bureaucracy, was believed to be without limit. In later consequence, the solvency of numerous banks, including that of some of the nation's largest and most prestigious institutions, was either fatally impaired or placed in doubt. The lending of both those that failed or were endangered and others was subject, by fear and example to curtailment. The construction industry was severely constrained and its workers left unemployed. A general recession ensued. Any early warning as to what was happening would have been exceptionally ill received, seen as yet another invasion of the benign rule of laissez faire and a specific interference with the market. However in keeping with the exceptions to this rule, there would be eventual salvation in a government bailout of the banks. Insurance of bank deposits — a far from slight contribution to contentment — was permissible, as well as assurance that were a bank large enough, it would not be allowed to fail. A preventive role by government was not allowed; eventual government rescue was highly acceptable.

I never enjoyed writing a book more; indeed, it is the only one I remember in no sense as a labor but as a joy.

Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.

There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.

Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.

What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve.

Get the process of negotiation away from the small specialized group that some people have called the "nuclear theologians," who in effect said this is a complicated issue of seeing how little we can give away, how much we can extract from the other side; it's highly specialized. Only a few people can understand the nature of these weapons, the delivery systems, the targeting, the nature of the MIRV and the CRUISE, on down, and the MX. This kept the whole discussion to a very limited group of people who, in a way, had assumed responsibility for saying whether we should live or die.

The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles.

Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

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.

Conscience is better served by a myth.

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

A drastic reduction in weapons competition following a general release from the commitment to the Cold War would be sharply in conflict with the needs of the industrial system.

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.

Power is as power does.