Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. John Kenneth Galbraith More Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith More Quotes From John Kenneth Galbraith 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 public-opinion balls air There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting. John Kenneth Galbraith beauty inspirational life There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it. John Kenneth Galbraith mistake opportunity science In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less. John Kenneth Galbraith banking style association Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design . . . The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version. John Kenneth Galbraith variation innovation design The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce. John Kenneth Galbraith ability value-systems produce All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum. John Kenneth Galbraith successful doors men I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people. John Kenneth Galbraith tendencies worried people Banking may well be a career from which no man really recovers. John Kenneth Galbraith careers business men Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man? John Kenneth Galbraith kings men world Happiness does not require an expanding economy John Kenneth Galbraith business management doe Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted. John Kenneth Galbraith advertising economy people Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue. John Kenneth Galbraith modesty economy virtue When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic. John Kenneth Galbraith rejection acceptance people People are the common denominator of progress. So no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills,and the other familiar furniture of economic development. But we are coming to realize that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first. John Kenneth Galbraith sea education people One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. John Kenneth Galbraith pieces wisdom knowledge We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much. John Kenneth Galbraith doctrine money littles Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does. John Kenneth Galbraith vacation ocean beach A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions. John Kenneth Galbraith emotion buying ordinary A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness. John Kenneth Galbraith proust greatness fame
