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

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.
John Kenneth Galbraith

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

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.
John Kenneth Galbraith

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
John Kenneth Galbraith

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.
John Kenneth Galbraith

The commencement speech is not, I think, a wholly satisfactory manifestation of our culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
John Kenneth Galbraith

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
John Kenneth Galbraith

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
John Kenneth Galbraith