John Kenneth Galbraith

Nothing in modern attitudes is believed more to signify exceptional intelligence than association with large pools of money. Only immediate experience with those so situated denies the myth.

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

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.

F or a decade after the bursting of the debt bubble in 1837, business conditions were depressed in the United States. The number of banks available for financing speculative adventures declined. Then, after another 10 years, public memory faded again.

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is
not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth.
Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great — a little understood
thing.

Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.

The recurrent and sadly erroneous belief that effortless enrichment is an entitlement associated with what is thought to be exceptional financial perspicacity and wisdom is not something that yields to legislative remedy.

The rule is that financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation.

Men can labor to make sense out of single steps toward the goal without ever pausing to reflect that the goal itself is ludicrous.

I would now, however, more strongly emphasize, and especially as to the United States, the inequality in income and that it is getting worse — that the poor remain poor and the command of income by those in the top income brackets is increasing egregiously. So is the political eloquence and power by which that income is defended. This I did not foresee.

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

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

As protection against financial illusion or insanity, memory is far better than laws...For protecting people from the cupidity of others and their own, history is highly utilitarian. It sustains memory, and memory serves the same purpose as the SEC, and on the record is far more effective

In any case, during the same month reassurance came from still higher authority. Andrew W. Mellon said, “There is no cause for worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue.” Mr. Mellon did not know. Neither did any of the other public figures who then, as since, made similar statements. These are not forecasts; it is not to be supposed that the men who make them are privileged to look farther into the future than the rest. Mr. Mellon was participating in a ritual which, in our society, is thought to be of great value for influencing the course of the business cycle. By affirming solemnly that prosperity will continue, it is believed, one can help insure that prosperity will in fact continue. Especially among businessmen the faith in the efficiency of such incantation is very great.

Good writing, and this is especially important in a subject such as economics, must also involve the reader in the matter at hand. It is not enough to explain. The images that are in the mind of the writer must be made to reappear in the mind of the reader, and it is the absence of this ability that causes much economic writing to be condemned, quite properly, as abstract.