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In Europe And The United States The Two Decades Following The Second World War Will For Long Be Remembered As A Very Good Time, The Time When Capitalism Really Worked. Everywhere In The Industrialized Countries Production Increased. Unemployment Was Everywhere Low. Prices Were Nearly Stable. When Production Lagged And Unemployment Rose, Governments Intervened To Take Up The Slack, As Keynes Had Urged.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

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In Europe And The

John Kenneth Galbraith

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In Europe And The United States The Two Decades Following The Second World War Will For Long Be Remembered As A Very Good Time, The Time When Capitalism Really Worked. Everywhere In The Industrialized Countries Production Increased. Unemployment Was Everywhere Low. Prices Were Nearly Stable. When Production Lagged And Unemployment Rose, Governments Intervened To Take Up The Slack, As Keynes Had Urged.

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A Point Must Be Repeated: Only The Pathological Weakness Of The Financial Memory...allows Us To Believe That The Modern Experience Of....debt...is In Any Way A New Phenomenon.

I Never Enjoyed Writing A Book More; Indeed, It Is The Only One I Remember In No Sense As A Labor But As A Joy.

Getting On The Cover Of Time Guarantees The Existence Of Opposition In The Future.

Under Capitalism, Man Exploits Man. Under Communism, It's Just The Opposite.

I Think The Role Of The Federal Reserve Is Enormously Exaggerated.

Federal Reserve

Few Economic Problems, If Any, Are Difficult Of Solution. The Difficulty, All But Invariably, Is In Confronting Them. We Know What Needs To Be Done; For Reasons Of Inertia, Pecuniary Interest, Passion Or Ignorance, We Do Not Wish To Say So.

But It Can Be Laid Down As A Rule That Those Who Speak Most Of Liberty Are Least Inclined To Use It.

If Anything Is Evident About People Who Manage Money, It Is That The Task Attracts A Very Low Level Of Talent, One That Is Protected In Its Highly Imperfect Profession By The Mystery That Is Thought To Enfold The Subject Of Economics In General And Of Money In Particular.

Oligopoly Is An Imperfect Monopoly. Like The Despotism Of The Dual Monarchy, It Is Saved Only By Its Incompetence.

Wealth, In Even The Most Improbable Cases, Manages To Convey The Aspect Of Intelligence.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt And J.f Kennedy Were Presidents In Very Different Times.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I've Become Accustomed To Supporting Politicians Who Are More Conservative Than I Am. This Is Not Entirely A Surprise.

Were It Part Of Our Everyday Education And Comment That The Corporation Is An Instrument For The Exercise Of Power, That It Belongs To The Process By Which We Are Governed, There Would Then Be Debate On How That Power Is Used And How It Might Be Made Subordinate To The Public Will And Need. This Debate Is Avoided By Propagating The Myth That The Power Does Not Exist.

Nothing Is More Portable Than Rich People And Their Money

There Was Something Superficial In Attributing Anything So Awful As The Great Depression To Anything So Insubstantial As Speculation In Common Stocks.

Great Depression

The First Goal Of The Technostructure Is Its Own Security.

In Economics, The Majority Is Always Wrong.

In The Autumn Of 1929 The Mightiest Of Americans Were, For A Brief Time, Revealed As Human Beings.

Happiness Does Not Require An Expanding Economy

The More Underdeveloped The Country, The More Overdeveloped The Women.

Writing Is A Long And Lonesome Business; Back Of The Problems In Thought And Composition Hover Always The Awful Questions: Is This The Page That Shows The Empty Shell? Is It Here And Now That They Find Me Out?

When People Are Least Sure, They Are Often Most Dogmatic.

If There Must Be Madness, Something May Be Said For Having It On A Heroic Scale

There Are Days When The Result Is So Bad That No Fewer Than Five Revisions Are Required. In Contrast, When I'm Greatly Inspired, Only Four Revisions Are Needed.

The Seminar In Economic Theory Conducted By Hayek At The L.s.e. In The 1930s Was Attended, It Came To Seem, By All Of The Economists Of My Generation - Nicky Kaldor , Thomas Balogh, L. K. Jah, Paul Rosenstein-rodan, The List Could Be Indefinitely Extended. The Urge To Participate (and Correct Hayek) Was Ruthlessly Competitive.

I Am For A Close Global Association In Trade And Financial Matters, Rather Than The Opposite Possibility Of Excessive Nationalism, As Manifested In The Two World Wars.

I Do The Best With What Exists.

Only Men Of Considerable Vanity Write Books; Consistently Therewith, I Worried Lest The World Were Exchanging An Irreplaceable Author For A More Easily Purchased Diplomat.

Economic Stimulation That Works Through The Increased Outlays To The Affluent Has, Inevitably, An Aspect Of Soundness And Sanity That Is Lacking In Expenditure On Behalf Of The Undeserving Poor.

Preservationists Are The Only People In The World Who Are Invariably Confirmed In Their Wisdom After The Fact.

In All Life One Should Comfort The Afflicted, But Verily, Also, One Should Afflict The Comfortable, And Especially When They Are Comfortably, Contentedly, Even Happily Wrong.

From The Spring Of 1941, I Controlled All Prices In The United States. You Could Lower A Price Without My Permission, But You Couldn't Raise A Price Without My Permission Or That Of My Staff.

The Income Men Derive From Producing Things Of Slight Consequence Is Of Great Consequence. The Production Reflects The Low Marginal Utility Of The Goods To Society. The Income Reflects The High Total Utility Of A Livelihood To A Person.

Some Years, Like Some Poets,and Politicians And Some Lovely Women, Are Singled Out For Fame Far Beyond The Common Lot, And 1929 Was Clearly Such A Year.

In Europe And The United States The Two Decades Following The Second World War Will For Long Be Remembered As A Very Good Time, The Time When Capitalism Really Worked. Everywhere In The Industrialized Countries Production Increased. Unemployment Was Everywhere Low. Prices Were Nearly Stable. When Production Lagged And Unemployment Rose, Governments Intervened To Take Up The Slack, As Keynes Had Urged.

It Is In The Long Run That The Corporation Lives.

I've Been A Faithful Reader Of The Great Classical Documents Of Economics, Or Tried To Be.

The Process By Which Banks Create Money Is So Simple That The Mind Is Repelled.

The Fully Planned Economy, So Far From Being Unpopular, Is Warmly Regarded By Those Who Know It Best.

Ralph [ Nader] Is An Old Friend Of Mine, And He Does A Useful Job In Displaying A Position.

I Predict, Not Because I Know, But Because I'm Asked.

We All Agree That Pessimism Is A Mark Of Superior Intellect.

The Commencement Speech Is Not, I Think, A Wholly Satisfactory Manifestation Of Our Culture.

It Is My Guiding Confession That I Believe The Greatest Error In Economics Is In Seeing The Economy As A Stable, Immutable Structure.

Had The Bible Been In Clear Straightforward Language, Had The Ambiguities And Contradictions Been Edited Out, And Had The Language Been Constantly Modernised To Accord With Contemporary Taste It Would Almost Certainly Have Been, Or Become, A Work Of Lesser Influence.

When You See Reference To A New Paradigm You Should Always, Under All Circumstances, Take Cover.

Conscience Is Better Served By A Myth.

It Takes A Certain Brashness To Attack The Accepted Economic Legendsbut Noneat All Toperpetuatethem. So Theyare Perpetuated.

Very Important Functions Can Be Performed Very Wastefully And Often Are.

The Notion Of A Formal Structure Of Command Must Be Abandoned. It Is More Useful To Think Of The Mature Corporation As A Series Of Concentric Circles.

Men Are, In Fact, Either Sustained By Organization Or They Sustain Organization.

When Everything Else Failed, We Can Still Become Immortal By Making An Enormous Blunder.

Wealth Is Not Without Its Advantages And The Case To The Contrary, Although It Has Often Been Made, Has Never Proved Widely Persuasive.

Those Who Yearn For The End Of Capitalism Should Pray For Government By Men Who Believe That All Positive Action Is Inimical To What They Call Thoughtfully The Fundamental Principles Of Free Enterprise.

Among All The World's Races, Some Obscure Bedouin Tribes Possibly Apart, Americans Are The Most Prone To Misinformation. This Is Not The Consequence Of Any Special Preference For Mendacity, Although At The Higher Levels Of Their Public Administration That Tendency Is Impressive. It Is Rather That So Much Of What They Themselves Believe Is Wrong.

Do Not Be Alarmed By Simplification, Complexity Is Often A Device For Claiming Sophistication, Or For Evading Simple Truths.

In Any Great Organization It Is Far, Far Safer To Be Wrong With The Majority Than To Be Right Alone.

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.

Those Days [of The Vietnam War] You Couldn't Get On A Bus Going To The South Without Expecting A Riot Over Something Or The Other. All Of That Has Disappeared Thanks To Lyndon Johnson.

When You See Reference To A New Paradigm You Should Always, Under All Circumstances, Take Cover. Because Ever Since The Great Tulipmania In 1637, Speculation Has Always Been Covered By A New Paradigm. There Was Never A Paradigm So New And So Wonderful As The One That Covered John Law And The South Sea Bubble - Until The Day Of Disaster.

Meetings Are Indispensable When You Don't Want To Do Anything.

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.

Modesty Is A Vastly Overrated Virtue.

There Are A Significant Number Of Learned Men And Women Who Hold That Any Successful Effort To Make Ideas Lively, Intelligible And Interesting Is A Manifestation Of Deficient Scholarship. This Is The Fortress Behind Which The Minimally Coherent Regularly Find Refuge.

Who Is King In The World Of The Blind When There Isn't Even A One Eyed Man?

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.

The Real Accomplishment Of Modern Science And Technology Consists In Taking Ordinary Men, Informing Them Narrowly And Deeply And Then, Through Appropriate Organization, Arranging To Have Their Knowledge Combined With That Of Other Specialized But Equally Ordinary Men. This Dispenses With The Need For Genius. The Resulting Performance, Though Less Inspiring, Is Far More Predictable.

The Masters Thought They Were Loved Until One Day One Of Their Favorites Farted Loudly While Serving Dinner And The Next Day Was Gone. The Very First Manifestation Of The Classless Society Is The Disappearance Of The Servant Class.

It Is A Far, Far Better Thing To Have A Firm Anchor In Nonsense Than To Put Out On The Troubled Seas Of Thought.

Broadly Speaking, Keynesianism Means That The Government Has A Specific Responsibility For The Behavior Of The Economy, That It Doesn't Work On Its Own Autonomous Course, But The Government, When There's A Recession, Compensates By Employment, By Expansion Of Purchasing Power, And In Boom Times Corrects By Being A Restraining Force. But It Controls The Great Flow Of Demand Into The Economy, What Since Keynesian Times Has Been The Flow Of Aggregate Demand. That Was The Basic Idea Of Keynes So Far As One Can Put It In A Couple Of Sentences.

Nostalgia Combines Regularly With Manifest Respectability To Give Credence To Old Error As Opposed To New Truth.

There's No Question That In My Lifetime, The Contrast Between What I Called Private Affluence And Public Squalor Has Become Very Much Greater.

Mr. David Stockman Has Said That Supply-side Economics Was Merely A Cover For The Trickle-down Approach To Economic Policy — What An Older And Less Elegant Generation Called The Horse-and-sparrow Theory: If You Feed The Horse Enough Oats, Some Will Pass Through To The Road For The Sparrows.

I Have Never Understood Why One's Affections Must Be Confined, As Once With Women, To A Single Country.

The Happiest Time Of Anyone's Life Is Just After The First Divorce.

The Modern Corporation Must Manufacture Not Only Goods But The Desire For The Goods It Manufactures.

No Society Ever Seems To Have Succumbed To Boredom. Man Has Developed An Obvious Capacity For Surviving The Pompous Reiteration Of The Commonplace.

Authorship Of Any Sort Is A Fantastic Indulgence Of The Ego.

She Is A Reflection Of Comfortable Middle-class Values That Do Not Take Seriously The Continuing Unemployment. What I Particularly Regret Is That She Does Not Take Seriously The Intellectual Decline. Having Given Up The Empire And The Mass Production Of Industrial Goods, Britain's Future Lay In Its Scientific And Artistic Pre-eminence. Mrs Thatcher Will Be Long Remembered For The Damage She Has Done.

Humor Is Richly Rewarding To The Person Who Employs It. It Has Some Value In Gaining And Holding Attention, But It Has No Persuasive Value At All.

Clerks In Downtown Hotels Were Said To Be Asking Guests Whether They Wished The Room For Sleeping Or Jumping. Two Men Jumped Hand-in-hand From A High Window In The Ritz. They Had A Joint Account.

Some Things Were Never Meant To Be Recycled.

Some Things Are Meant To Be

Wisdom... Is Often An Abstraction Associated Not With Fact Or Reality But With The Man Who Asserts It And The Manner Of Its Assertion.

In The Affluent Society, No Useful Distinction Can Be Made Between Luxuries And Necessities.

Much Literary Criticism Comes From People For Whom Extreme Specialization Is A Cover Either For Grave Cerebral Inadequacy Or Terminal Laziness, The Latter Being A Much-cherished Aspect Of Academic Freedom.

I Feel Very Angry When I Think Of Brilliant, Or Even Interesting, Women Whose Minds Are Wasted On A Home. Better Have An Affair. It Isn't Permanent And You Keep Your Job.

Then Came The Second Amsterdam Discovery, Although The Principle Was Known Elsewhere. Bank Deposits...did Not Need To Be Left Idly In The Bank. They Could Be Lent. The Bank Then Got Interest. The Borrower Then Had A Deposit That He Could Spend. But The Original Deposit Still Stood To The Credit Of The Original Depositor. That Too Could Be Spent. Money, Spendable Money, Had Been Created. Let No One Rub His Or Her Eyes. It's Still Being Done-every Day. The Creation Of Money By A Bank Is As Simple As This, So Simple, I've Often Said, That The Mind Is Slightly Repelled.

That One Never Need To Look Beyond The Love Of Money For Explanation Of Human Behavior Is One Of The Most Jealously Guarded Simplification Of Our Culture.

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.

There's No Question That In My Lifetime, The Contrast Between What I Called Private Affluence And Public Squalor Has Become Very Much Greater. What Do We Worry About? We Worry About Our Schools. We Worry About Our Public Recreational Facilities. We Worry About Our Law Enforcement And Our Public Housing. All Of The Things That Bear Upon Our Standard Of Living Are In The Public Sector.

The Foresight Of Financial Experts Was, As So Often, A Poor Guide To The Future.

Seaboard Air Line, Which Was Thought By Numerous Innocents To Provide A Foothold In Aviation, Was Another Favorite, Although, In Fact, It Was A Railroad.

The Inborn Instability Of Capitalism Has Been Part Of The History Of The System For Several Hundred Years, Including Recurrent Speculative Episodes. There Should Be No Doubt In Anyone's Mind That We're Now Having Another One Of Those Speculative Episodes.

The World Of Finance Hails The Invention Of The Wheel Over And Over Again, Often In A Slightly More Unstable Version.

We Have Escapist Fiction, So Why Not Escapist Biography?

Why Is Anything Intrinsically So Valueless So Obviously Desirable?

The Miserable Consumption Of The Poor Is Partly The Result Of The Ostentatious Demands Of The Rich. There Isn't Enough For Both, And The Latter Get Far More Than They Need...but Could Anything Seriously Be Done About It?

Unemployment Is Rarely Considered Desirable Except By Those Who Have Not Experienced It.

A Businessman Who Reads Business Week Is Lost To Fame. One Who Reads Proust Is Marked For Greatness.

A Very Complicated Mass Of Things Influences The Economy - The Speculative Effect, Government Policy, Consumer Borrowing And Spending, The Level Of Technical Innovation (which I Concede, Although Everyone Emphasizes It Too Much), And Much More - Including, Of Course, The Rate Of Inflation.

Politics Is The Art Of Choosing Between The Disastrous And The Unpalatable.

Liberalism Is, I Think, Resurgent. One Reason Is That More And More People Are So Painfully Aware Of The Alternative.

The Questions That Are Beyond The Reach Of Economics-the Beauty, Dignity, Pleasure And Durability Of Life-may Be Inconvenient But They Are Important.

Educators Have Yet To Realize How Deeply The Industrial System Is Dependent Upon Them.

People Of Privilege Will Always Risk Their Complete Destruction Rather Than Surrender Any Material Part Of Their Advantage.

The Greater The Wealth The Thicker Will Be The Dirt.

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.

The Senate Has Unlimited Debate; In The House, Debate Is Ruthlessly Circumscribed. There Is Frequent Discussion As To Which Technique Most Effectively Frustrates Democratic Process.

In Economics, Unlike Fiction And The Theater, There Is No Harm In A Premature Disclosure Of The Plot: It Is To See The Changes Just Mentioned And Others As An Interlocked Whole.

People Are The Common Denominator Of Progress; No Improvement Is Possible With Unimproved People.

The Line Dividing The State From What Is Called Private Enterprise, Orat Least Fromthehighlyorganized Part Of It, Is A Traditional Fiction.

I Would Put Primary Emphasis On A Good Standard Of Living Equitably Distributed. It Can't Be Equal, But One That Eliminates The Terrible Cruelty Of Poverty.

Marx Profoundly Affected Those Who Did Not Accept His System. His Influence Extended To Those Who Least Supposed They Were Subject To It.

Foreign Policy Is Conducted For The Convenience And Enjoyment Of People In Washington.

We Live Surrounded By A Systematic Appeal To A Dream World Which All Mature, Scientific Reality Would Reject. We, Quite Literally, Advertise Our Commitment To Immaturity, Mendacity And Profound Gullibility. It Is As The Hallmark Of The Culture. And It Is Justified As Being Economically Indispensable.

Almost Every Aspect Of Its (federal Reserve) History Should Be Approached With A Discriminating Disregard For What Is Commonly Taught Or Believed.

Agriculture Is One Economic Activity That Does Not Obey The Laws Of Demand And Supply.

Few Things Are As Immutable As The Addiction Of Political Groups To The Ideas By Whichthey Have Once Won Office.

Anyone Who Says He Won't Resign Four Times, Will.

Any Consideration Of The Life And Larger Social Existence Of The Modern Corporate Man Begins And Also Largely Ends With The Effect Of One All-embracing Force. That Is Organization - The Highly Structured Assemblage Of Men, And Now Some Women, Of Which He Is A Part. It Is To This, At The Expense Of Family, Friends, Sex, Recreation And Sometimes Health And Effective Control Of Alcoholic Intake, That He Is Expected To Devote His Energies.

One Of The Best Ways Of Avoiding Necessary And Even Urgent Tasks Is To Seem To Be Busily Employed On Things That Are Already Done.

You Will Find That [the] State [department] Is The Kind Of Organisation Which, Though It Does Big Things Badly, Does Small Things Badly Too.

It Is Possible That People Need To Believe They Are Unmanaged If They Are To Be Managed Effectively.

Economic Life, As Always, Is A Matrix In Which Result Becomes Cause And Cause Becomes Result.

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.

It Takes Some Skill To Spoil A Breakfast - Even The English Can't Do It.

My Rule On Honorary Degrees Has Always Been To Have One More Than Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Much Of The World's Work, It Has Been Said, Is Done By Men Who Do Not Feel Quite Well. Marx Is A Case In Point.

Let’s Begin With Capitalism, A Word That Has Gone Largely Out Of Fashion. The Approved Reference Now Is To The Market System. This Shift Minimizes - Indeed, Deletes - The Role Of Wealth In The Economic And Social System. And It Sheds The Adverse Connotation Going Back To Marx. Instead Of The Owners Of Capital Or Their Attendants In Control, We Have The Admirably Impersonal Role Of Market Forces. It Would Be Hard To Think Of A Change In Terminology More In The Interest Of Those To Whom Money Accords Power. They Have Now A Functional Anonymity.

Economic Theory Is The Most Prestigious Subject Of Instruction And Study. Agricultural Economics, Labor Economics And Marketing Are Lower Caste Fields Of Study.

I Was In Charge Of Price Controls In World War Ii And Had A Ceiling On Overall Prices. Everybody Who Was Subject To General Maximum Price Regulation Wanted An Exception And Went To Congress To Persuade A Congressman, Or A Group Of People On The Hill, That I Was Being A Menace To Their Industry.

Washington Is A Place Where Men Praise Courage And Act On Elaborate Personal Cost-benefit Calculations.

The Shortcomings Of Economics Are Not Original Error But Uncorrected Obsolescence. The Obsolescence Has Occurred Because What Is Convenient Has Become Sacrosanct. Anyone Who Attacks Such Ideas Must Seem To Be A Trifle Self-confident And Even Aggressive. The Man Who Makes His Entry By Leaning Against An Infirm Door Gets An Unjustified Reputation For Violence. Something Is To Be Attributed To The Poor State Of The Door.

One Can Relish The Varied Idiocy Of Human Action During A Panic To The Full, For, While It Is A Time Of Great Tragedy, Nothing Is Being Lost But Money.

In The Market Economy The Price That Is Offered Is Counted Upon To Produce The Result That Is Sought.

Meetings Are Held Because Men Seek Companionship Or, At A Minimum, Wish To Escape The Tedium Of Solitary Duties. They Yearn For The Prestige Which Accrues To The Man Who Presides Over Meetings, And This Leads Them To Convoke Assemblages Over Which They Can Preside. Finally, There Is The Meeting Which Is Called Not Because There Is Business To Be Done, But Because It Is Necessary To Create The Impression That Business Is Being Done. Such Meetings Are More Than A Substitute For Action. They Are Widely Regarded As Action.

It Was Not Hard To Persuade People That The Market Was Sound; As Always In Such Times They Asked Only That The Dispiriting Voices Of Doubt Be Muted And That There Should Be Tolerably Frequent Expressions Of Confidence.

Economists, On The Whole, Think Well Of What They Do Themselves And Much Less Well Of What Their Professional Colleagues Do.

If We Are Concerned About Our Great Appetite For Materials, It Is Plausible To Decrease Waste, To Make Better Use Of Stocks Available, And To Develop Substitutes. But What About The Appetite Itself? The Major Cause Of The Continued Deterioration Of The Global Environment Is The Unsustainable Pattern Of Consumption And Production, Particularly In Industrialised Countries

The Sense Of Responsibility In The Financial Community For The Community As A Whole Is Not Small. It Is Nearly Nil.

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.

The Notion That You Would Initiate A New Product Without Preparing The Way By Persuasion And Advertising And Salesmanship Is Fantastic. It's An Integral Part Of The System.

I Think Without A Doubt, That What Is Called "financial Genius" Is Merely A Rising Market.

In A Community Where Public Services Have Failed To Keep Abreast Of Private Consumption Things Are Very Different. Here, In An Atmosphere Of Private Opulence And Public Squalor, The Private Goods Have Full Sway.

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.

I Was Brought Up In Southwestern Ontario Where We Were Taught That Canadian Patriotism Should Not Withstand Anything More Than A Five-dollar-a-month Wage Differential. Anything More Than That And You Went To Detroit.

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.

Men Have Been Swindled By Other Men On Many Occasions. The Autumn Of 1929 Was, Perhaps, The First Occasion When Men Succeeded On A Large Scale In Swindling Themselves.

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.

We Now In The United States Have More Security Guards For The Rich Than We Have Police Services For The Poor Districts. If You're Looking For Personal Security, Far Better To Move To The Suburbs Than To Pay Taxes In New York.

Security Guards

I React Pragmatically. Where The Market Works, I'm For That. Where The Government Is Necessary, I'm For That. I'm Deeply Suspicious Of Somebody Who Says, 'i'm In Favor Of Privatization,' Or, 'i'm Deeply In Favor Of Public Ownership.' I'm In Favor Of Whatever Works In The Particular Case.

There Is A Common Tendency To Ignore The Poor Or To Develop Some Rationalisation For The Good Fortune Of The Fortunate.

In The Assumption That Power Belongs As A Matter Of Course To Capital, All Economists Are Marxians.

A Drastic Reduction In Weapons Competition Following A General Release From The Commitment To The Cold War Would Be Sharply In Conflict With The Needs Of The Industrial System.

Nothing So Denies A Person Liberty As The Total Absence Of Money.

In Fact, The Wage-price Spiral Is The Functional Counterpart Of Unemployment. The Latter Occurs When There Is Insufficient Demand; The Spiral Operates When There Is Too Much And Also,unfortunately, When There Is Just Enough.

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.

There Was The Missile Crisis, But One Can't Attribute To The [j.f.] Kennedy Years Anything Like The Problems That [franklin] Roosevelt Stood Over And Surmounted.

The Problem Of The Modern Economy Is Not A Failure Of A Knowledge Of Economics; It's A Failure Of A Knowledge Of History.

Hermann Goering, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher And Robert Ley Did Pass Under My Inspectionand Interrogation In 1945 But They Only Proved That National Socialism Was A Gangster Interlude At A Rather Low Order Of Mental Capacity And With A Surprisingly High Incidence Of Alcoholism.

It Is Almost As Important To Know What Is Not Serious As To Know What Is.

Economics Is A Subject Profoundly Conducive To Cliche, Resonant With Boredom. On Few Topics Is An American Audience So Practiced In Turning Off Its Ears And Minds. And None Can Say That The Response Is Ill Advised.

Poverty" Pitt Exclaimed "is No Disgrace But It Is Damned Annoying." In The Contemporary United States It Is Not Annoying But It Is A Disgrace.

[franklin Delano] Roosevelt Was The Central World Figure In The Two Great Disasters Of This Century - The Great Depression And World War Ii. By Contrast, Jfk Came In Relatively Peaceful, Agreeable Times.

A Good Rule Of Conversation Is Never Answer A Foolish Question.

In The United States, Though Power Corrupts, The Expectation Of Power Paralyzes.

All Crises Have Involved Debt That, In One Fashion Or Another, Has Become Dangerously Out Of Scale In Relation To The Underlying Means Of Payment.

Ideas Are Inherently Conservative. They Yield Not To The Attack Of Other Ideas But To The Massive Onslaught Of Circumstance With Which They Cannot Contend.

Of Late I Have Searched Diligently To Discover The Advantages Of Age, And There Is, I Have Concluded, Only One. It Is That Lovely Women Treat Your Approaches With Understanding Rather Than With Disdain.

We're All Subject To The Daily Pressures Of Consumer Persuasion.

If Inheritance Qualifies One For Office, Intelligence Cannot Be A Requirement.

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.

It's Great To Be With William Buckley, Because You Don't Have To Think. He Takes A Position And You Automatically Take The Opposite One And You Know You're Right.

Banking May Well Be A Career From Which No Man Really Recovers.

It's Much Easier To Point Out The Problem Than It Is To Say Just How It Should Be Solved.

The Ideas By Which People . . . Interpret Their Existence And In Measure Guide Their Behavior, Were Not Forged In A World Of Wealth.

In Economics It Is A Far, Far Wiser Thing To Be Right Than To Be Consistent

There Is Little That Can Be Said About Most Economic Goods. A Toothbrush Does Little But Clean Teeth. Aspirin Does Little But Dull Pain. Alcohol Is Important Mostly For Making People More Or Less Drunk ... There Being So Little To Be Said, Much Is To Be Invented.

Complexity And Obscurity Have Professional Value - They Are The Academic Equivalents Of Apprenticeship Rules In The Building Trades. They Exclude The Outsiders, Keep Down The Competition, Preserve The Image Of A Privileged Or Priestly Class. The Man Who Makes Things Clear Is A Scab. He Is Criticized Less For His Clarity Than For His Treachery.

All Writers Know That On Some Golden Mornings They Are Touched By The Wand; They Are On Intimate Terms With Poetry And Cosmic Truth. I Have Experienced These Moments Myself. Their Lesson Is Simple: It's A Total Illusion. And The Danger In The Illusion Is That You Will Wait For Those Moments.

One Must Always Have In Mind One Simple Fact - There Is No Literate Population In The World That Is Poor, And There Is No Illiterate Population That Is Anything But Poor.

To See Economic Policy As A Problem Of Choice Between Rival Ideologies Is The Greatest Error Of Our Time.

Simple Minds, Presumably, Are The Easiest To Manage.

War Remains The Decisive Human Failure.

Over The Span Of Man's History, Although A Phenomenal Amount Of Education, Persuasion, Indoctrination And Incantation Have Been Devoted To The Effort, Ordinary People Have Never Been Quite Persuaded That Toil Is As Agreeable As Its Alternatives. Thus To Take Increased Well-being Partly In The Form Of More Goods And Partly In The Form Of More Leisure Is Unquestionably Rational.

No Hungry Man Who Is Also Sober Can Be Persuaded To Use His Last Dollar For Anything But Food.

The Spirit Should Never Grow Old.

American University Presidents Are A Nervous Breed; I Have Never Thought Well Of Them As A Class.

American Universities

The Metropolis Should Have Been Aborted Long Before It Became New York, London Or Tokyo.

Both We And The Soviets Face The Common Threat Of Nuclear Destruction And There Is No Likelihood That Either Capitalism Or Communism Will Survive A Nuclear War.

If A Man Didn't Make Sense, The Scotch Felt It Was Misplaced Politeness To Try To Keep Him From Knowing It. Better That He Be Aware Of His Reputation, For This Would Encourage Reticence Which Goes Well With Stupidity.

No Grant Of Feudal Privilege Has Ever Equaled, For Effortless Return, That Of The Grandparent Who Bought And Endowed His Descendants With A Thousand Shares Of General Motors Or General Electric.

The Size Of General Motors Is In The Service Not Of Monopoly Or The Economies Of Scale But Of Planning.

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.

Economists Are Economical, Among Other Things, Of Ideas; Most Make Those Of Their Graduate Days Do For A Lifetime.

Technology Means The Systematic Application Of Scientific Or Other Organized Knowledge To Practical Tasks.

Decision Has Greater Virtue And Force If Taken After There Has Been Eloquent Dissent.

More Investment Trusts Securities Were Offered In September Of 1929 Even Than In August - The Total Was Above $600 Million. However, The Nearly Simultaneous Promotion Of Shenandoah And Blue Ridge Was To Stand As The Pinnacle Of New Era Finance. It Is Difficult Not To Marvel At The Imagination Which Was Implicit In This Gargantuan Insanity. If There Must Be Madness Something May Be Said For Having It On A Heroic Scale.

Even The Word Depression Itself Was The Terminological Product Of An Effort To Soften The Connotation Of Deep Trouble. In The Last Century, The Term Crisis Was Normally Employed. With Time, However, This Acquired The Connotation Of The Misfortune It Described.

Those Who Had Been Riding The Upward Wave Decide Now Is The Time To Get Out. Those Who Thought The Increase Would Be Forever Find Their Illusion Destroyed Abruptly, And They, Also, Respond To The Newly Revealed Reality By Selling Or Trying To Sell. And Thus The Rule, Supported By The Experience Of Centuries: The Speculative Episode Always Ends Not With A Whimper But With A Bang.

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