John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes About Politics
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There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.
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In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.
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There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.
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Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.
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The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
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From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute.
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Some things were never meant to be recycled.
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In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
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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.
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Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.
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Anyone who says he won't resign four times, will.
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One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
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One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.
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Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state.
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Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
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You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
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When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.
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Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
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In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.
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Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
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There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
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The greater the wealth the thicker will be the dirt.
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You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.
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Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
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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.
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The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.
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There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.
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In the old days, land was important as the giver of all things. That period is gone now. Technology and brainpower are all that matters and yet conflicts over land, specially one like on the India-China border, that yields nothing, continue. This is a burden of ancient history that we continue to carry. If tomorrow there is settlement on planet Mars, we will begin to worry if others are interested.
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Foreign policy is conducted for the convenience and enjoyment of people in Washington.
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