John Kenneth Galbraith

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”

“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.”

“Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.”

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

“Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.”

“The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.”

“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.”

“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”

“More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.”

“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.”

“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.”

“Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.”

“In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.”