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 More Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith More Quotes From John Kenneth Galbraith It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is. John Kenneth Galbraith serious important knows Broadly speaking, Keynesianism means that the government has a specific responsibility for the behavior of the economy, that it doesn't work on its own autonomous course, but the government, when there's a recession, compensates by employment, by expansion of purchasing power, and in boom times corrects by being a restraining force. But it controls the great flow of demand into the economy, what since Keynesian times has been the flow of aggregate demand. That was the basic idea of Keynes so far as one can put it in a couple of sentences. John Kenneth Galbraith couple responsibility mean Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. John Kenneth Galbraith freedom political art One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read. John Kenneth Galbraith realization writing people The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce. John Kenneth Galbraith divorce life-is firsts The masters thought they were loved until one day one of their favorites farted loudly while serving dinner and the next day was gone. The very first manifestation of the classless society is the disappearance of the servant class. John Kenneth Galbraith next-day one-day class Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear. John Kenneth Galbraith underwear economy power It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved. John Kenneth Galbraith modern technology problem Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspectionand interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism. John Kenneth Galbraith goering nazism order Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects. John Kenneth Galbraith economics suffering believe To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time. John Kenneth Galbraith investing errors choices In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. John Kenneth Galbraith economics faith desire If all else fails immortality can always be assured by adequate error. John Kenneth Galbraith laughter humorous mistake The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not. John Kenneth Galbraith investing may men Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied. John Kenneth Galbraith riches rich class Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will. John Kenneth Galbraith four politics political It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. John Kenneth Galbraith investing anchors sea The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products. John Kenneth Galbraith consumerism individual saving No politician can praise unemployment or inflation, and there is no way of combining high employment with stable prices that does not involve some control of income and prices. Otherwise the struggle for more consumption and more income to sustain it-a struggle that modern corporations, modern unions and modern democracy all facilitate and encourage-will drive up prices. Only heavy unemployment will then temper this upward thrust. Not many wish to confront the truth that the modern economy gives a choice only between inflation, unemployment, or controls. John Kenneth Galbraith choices struggle giving Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried. John Kenneth Galbraith milton economic policy
