Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest. John Kenneth Galbraith More Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith More Quotes From John Kenneth Galbraith Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery. John Kenneth Galbraith competitionclassmen 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-opinionballsair There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting. John Kenneth Galbraith beautyinspirationallife 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 mistakeopportunityscience 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 bankingstyleassociation 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 variationinnovationdesign The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of the society to produce. John Kenneth Galbraith abilityvalue-systemsproduce 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 successfuldoorsmen I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people. John Kenneth Galbraith tendenciesworriedpeople Banking may well be a career from which no man really recovers. John Kenneth Galbraith careersbusinessmen Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn't even a one eyed man? John Kenneth Galbraith kingsmenworld Happiness does not require an expanding economy John Kenneth Galbraith businessmanagementdoe Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted. John Kenneth Galbraith advertisingeconomypeople Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue. John Kenneth Galbraith modestyeconomyvirtue When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic. John Kenneth Galbraith rejectionacceptancepeople 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 seaeducationpeople One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. John Kenneth Galbraith pieceswisdomknowledge 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 doctrinemoneylittles 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 vacationoceanbeach A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions. John Kenneth Galbraith emotionbuyingordinary
