A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.
John Kenneth Galbraith

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.
John Kenneth Galbraith

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
John Kenneth Galbraith

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
John Kenneth Galbraith

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.
John Kenneth Galbraith


Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.
John Kenneth Galbraith

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth Galbraith

If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.
John Kenneth Galbraith

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
John Kenneth Galbraith

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

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, the majority is always wrong.
John Kenneth Galbraith

In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
John Kenneth Galbraith

It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.
John Kenneth Galbraith