“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.”
Politics
“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.”
GreatAll Quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith
“Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.”
Business“Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.”
Power“The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.”
Wisdom“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.”
Great“Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.”
Politics“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.”
Power“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.”
Finance“War remains the decisive human failure.”
Failure“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
Art“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”
Government“There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”
Beauty“There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.”
Politics“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.”
Nature“In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.”
Power“In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.”
Faith“More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.”
Food“Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.”
Politics“In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.”
Alone“By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.”
Age