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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.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

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The Notion Of A

John Kenneth Galbraith

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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.

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In The Early Days Of The Crash It Was Widely Believed That Jesse L. Livermore, A Bostonian With A Large And Unquestionably Exaggerated Reputation For Bear Operations, Leading A Syndicate That Was Driving The Market Down.

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

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.

The Charge That An Idea Is Radical, Impractical, Or Long- Haired Is Met By Showing That A Prominent Businessman Has Favored It?an Additional Tactic In This Strategy Of Defense?is To Assert That Winston Churchill Once Sponsored The Particular Idea. If One Is Challenged, A Sufficiently Careful Investigation Will Show That He Did.

People Are The Common Denominator Of Progress. So No Improvement Is Possible With Unimproved People, And Advance Is Certain When People Are Liberated And Educated. It Would Be Wrong To Dismiss The Importance Of Roads, Railroads, Power Plants, Mills,and The Other Familiar Furniture Of Economic Development. But We Are Coming To Realize That There Is A Certain Sterility In Economic Monuments That Stand Alone In A Sea Of Illiteracy. Conquest Of Illiteracy Comes First.

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

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.

We Do Not Manufacture Wants For Goods We Do Not Produce.

I Talked About The Consolidation Of Power In The Hands Of The Corporate Bureaucracy, As Distinct From The Stockholders. To This View, I Still Strongly Adhere.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Of All Classes The Rich Are The Most Noticed And The Least Studied.

Inventions That Are Not Made, Like Babies That Are Not Born, Are Rarely Missed.

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

In A World Where For Pedagogic And Other Purposes A Very Large Number Of Economists Is Required, An Arrangement Which Discourages Many Of Them From

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

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

There Is No Name For All Who Participate In Group Decision-making Or The Organization Which They Form. I Propose To Call This Organization The Technostructure.

By All But The Pathologically Romantic, It Is Now Recognized That This Is Not The Age Of The Small Man.

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

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.

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

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

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

Of All The Mysteries Of The Stock Exchange There Is None So Impenetrable As Why There Should Be A Buyer For Everyone Who Seeks To Sell.

The Complaints Of The Privileged Are Too Often Confused With The Voice Of The Masses.

At Best, In Such Depression Times, Monetary Policy Is A Feeble Reed On Which To Lean.

Monetary Policy

The Urge To Consume Is Fathered By The Value System Which Emphasizes The Ability Of The Society To Produce.

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

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.

Emancipation Of Belief Is The Most Formidable Of The Tasks Of Reform And The One On Which All Else Depends.

If You Feed Enough Oats To The Horse, Some Will Pass Through To Feed The Sparrows (referring To "trickle Down" Economics).

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.

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

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

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.

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 React To What Is Necessary. I Would Like To Eschew Any Formula.

In Recent Times No Problem Has Been More Puzzling To Thoughtful People Than Why, In A Troubled World, We Make Such Poor Use Of Our Affluence.

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

Economics Is Not An Exact Science.

The Myth That Holds That The Great Corporation Is The Puppet Of The Market, The Powerless Servant Of The Consumer, Is, In Fact One Of The Devices By Which Its Power Is Perpetuated.

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

To Add To The Technostructure Is To Increase Its Power In The Enterprise.

Few Things In Life Can Be So Appalling As The Difference Between A Dry Antiseptic Statement Of A Principle By A Well Spoken Man In A Quiet Office, And What Happens To People When That Principle Is Put Into Practice.

What Was Needed Was A Policy That Increased The Supply Of Money Available For Use And Then Ensured Its Use. Then The State Of Trade Would Have To Improve.

Where Humor Is Concerned There Are No Standards - No One Can Say What Is Good Or Bad, Although You Can Be Sure That Everyone Will.

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

Under The Privilege Of The First Amendment Many, Many Ridiculous Things Are Said.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Drive Toward Complex Technical Achievement Offers A Clue To Why The U.s. Is Good At Space Gadgetry And Bad At Slum Problems.

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.

One Of The Greatest Pieces Of Economic Wisdom Is To Know What You Do Not Know.

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

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

The Stock Market Is But A Mirror Which Provides An Image Of The Underlying Or Fundamental Economic Situation. Cause And Effect Run From The Economy To The Stock Market, Never The Reverse. In 1929 The Economy Was Headed For Trouble. Eventually That Trouble Was Violently Reflected In Wall Street.

With The American Failure Came World Failure.

Private Enterprise Did Not Get Us Atomic Energy.

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

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

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.

These Are The Days When Men Of All Social Disciplines And All Political Faiths Seek The Comfortable And The Accepted; When The Man Of Controversy Is Looked Upon As A Disturbing Influence; When Originality Is Taken To Be A Mark Of Instability; And When, In Minor Modification Of The Original Parable, The Bland Lead The Bland.

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.

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

Man, At Least When Educated, Is A Pessimist. He Believes It Safer Not To Reflect On His Achievements; Jove Is Known To Strike Such People Down.

In Dealing With Mr. Nixon, It Is Not Easy To Be Unfair. He Invites And Justifies All Available Criticism.

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.

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.

We Shall Have A Race Of Men Who Are Strong On Telemetry And Space Communications But Who Cannot Read Anything But A Blueprint Or Write Anything But A Computer Program.

World War Ii Revealed Two Of The Enduring Features Of The Keynesian Revolution. One Was The Moral Difference Between Spending For Welfare And Spending For War. During The Depression Very Modest Outlays For The Unemployed Seemed Socially Debilitating, Economically Unsound. Now Expenditures Many Times Greater For Weapons And Soldiers Were Perfectly Safe. It's A Difference That Still Persists.

I've Long Believed Alas, That In Highly Organized Industrial Societies, Capitalist Or Socialist, The Stronger Tendency Is To Converge - That If Steel Or Automobiles Are Wanted And Must Be Made On A Large Scale, The Process Will Stamp Its Imprint On The Society, Whether That Me Be Magnitogorsk Or Gary, Indiana.

The Conspicuously Wealthy Turn Up Urging The Character Building Values Of The Privation Of The Poor.

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.

Happiness Does Not Require An Expanding Economy

In Central Banking As In Diplomacy, Style, Conservative Tailoring, And An Easy Association With The Affluent Count Greatly And Results Far Much Less.

Because Of His Compassion Owen Was Always In Trouble With His Partners. They Would Have Much Preferred A Tough, Down-to-earth Manager Who Would Get A Days Work Out Of The Little Bastards.

More Die In The United States Of Too Much Food Than Of Too Little.

Funny Inspirational

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

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

Much Discussion Of Money Involves A Heavy Overlay Of Priestly Incantation.

The Only Function Of Economic Forecasting Is To Make Astrology Look Respectable.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Genius Of The Industrial System Lies In Its Organized Use Of Capital And Technology. This Is Made Possible, As We Have Duly Seen, By Extensively Replacing The Market With Planning.

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 Something Wonderful In Seeing A Wrong-headed Majority Assailed By Truth.

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

Federal Reserve

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

The Contented And Economically Comfortable Have A Very Discriminating View Of Government. Nobody Is Ever Indignant About Bailing Out Failed Banks And Failed Savings And Loans Associations... But When Taxes Must Be Paid For The Lower Middle Class And Poor, The Government Assumes An Aspect Of Wickedness.

The Study Of Money, Above All Other Fields In Economics, Is One In Which Complexity Is Used To Disguise Truth Or To Evade Truth, Not To Reveal It. The Process By Which Banks Create Money Is So Simple The Mind Is Repelled.

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.

No Nice Philosophical Point Has Ever Been So Decisively Resolved As This: That Those Who Are Not Conceived Do Not Miss The Pleasure Of Consuming The Goods They Do Not Get Born To Enjoy.

The American Colonies, All Know, Were Greatly Opposed To Taxation Without Representation. They Were Also, A Less Celebrated Quality, Equally Opposed To Taxation With Representation.

Taxation Without Representation

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

A Nuclear War Does Not Defend A Country And It Does Not Defend A System. I've Put It The Same Way Many Times; Not Even The Most Accomplished Ideologue Will Be Able To Tell The Difference Between The Ashes Of Capitalism And The Ashes Of Communism.

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.

The Massive Reduction In Risk That Is Inherent In The Development Of The Modern Corporation Has Been Far From Fully Appreciated.

Any Country That Has Milton Friedman As An Adviser Has Nothing To Fear From A Few Million Arabs.

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

The Family Which Takes It Mauve And Cerise, Air Conditioned, Power-steered, And Power Braked Automobile Out For A Tour Passes Through Cities That Are Badly Paved, Made Hideous By Litter, Blighted Buildings, Billboards, And Posts For Wires That Should Long Since Have Been Put Underground.

There's A Certain Part Of The Contented Majority Who Love Anybody Who Is Worth A Billion Dollars.

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

The Privileged Have Regularly Invited Their Own Destruction With Their Greed.

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

One Man's Consumption Becomes His Neighbor's Wish.

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 Years Of The Great Depression Were A Superb Time For Economists Because People Not Knowing What Could Be Done Or What Should Be Done Would Always Assume That Maybe An Economist Had The Answer. If You Were Just A Lawyer In Washington, You Were Nobody. But If You Were An Economist, You Might Have The Answer.

A More Important Antidote To American Democracy Is American Gerontocracy. The Positions Of Eminence And Authority In Congress Are Allotted In Accordance With Length Of Service, Regardless Of Quality.

[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.

It Would Be Foolish To Suggest That Government Is A Good Custodian Of Aesthetic Goals. But, There Is No Alternative To The State.

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.

The Accepted Ideas Of Any Period Are Singularly Those That Serve The Dominant Economic Interest...what Economists Believe And Teach, Whether In The United States Or In The Soviet Union, Is Rarely Hostile To The Institutions - The Private Business Enterprise, The Communist Party - That Reflect The Dominant Economic Power. Not To Notice This Takes Effort, Although Many Succeed.

What Is Called A High Standard Of Living Consists, In Considerable Measure, In Arrangements For Avoiding Muscular Energy, For Increasing Sensual Pleasure And Enhancing Caloric Intake Above Any Conceivable Nutritional Requirement.

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

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

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

There Is An Insistent Tendency Among Serious Social Scientists To Think Of Any Institution Which Features Rhymed And Singing Commercials, Intense And Lachrymose Voices Urging Highly Improbable Enjoyment, Caricatures Of The Human Esophagus In Normal And Impaired Operation, And Which Hints Implausibly At Opportunities For Antiseptic Seduction As Inherently Trivial. This Is A Great Mistake. The Industrial System Is Profoundly Dependent On Commercial Television And Could Not Exist In Its Present Form Without It.

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.

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.

No Intelligence System Can Predict What A Government Will Do If It Doesn't Know Itself.

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

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.

There Is An Old Saying, Or Should Be, That It Is A Wise Economist Who Recognizes The Scope Of His Own Generalizations.

Power Is Not Something That Can Be Assumed Or Discarded At Will Like Underwear.

I Am Worried About Our Tendency To Over Invest In Things And Under Invest In People.

There Can Be No Question, However, That Prolonged Commitment To Mathematical Exercises In Economics Can Be Damaging. It Leads To The Atrophy Of Judgement And Intuition. . .

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

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.

Third Party Politics, At Least Since La Follette, Has Always Had An Element Of Romance.

The Conventional View Serves To Protect Us From The Painful Job Of Thinking.

The Inborn Instability Of Capitalism Has Been Part Of The History Of The System For Several Hundred Years.

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.

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.

If We Were Not In Vietnam, All That Part Of The World Would Be Enjoying The Obscurity It So Richly Deserves.

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?

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?

Economics Is Extremely Useful As A Form Of Employment For Economists.

If People Are Hungry, Ill-clad, Unsheltered Or Diseased, Nothing Is So Important As To Remedy Their Condition.

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.

You Roll Back The Stones, And You Find Slithering Things. That Is The World Of Richard Nixon.

All Successful Revolutions Are The Kicking In Of A Rotten Door.

Smoking Dope And Hanging Up Che's Picture Is No More A Commitment Than Drinking Milk And Collecting Postage Stamps. A Revolution In Consciousness Is An Empty High Without A Revolution In The Distribution Of Power.

Few People At The Beginning Of The Nineteenth Century Needed An Adman To Tell Them What They Wanted.

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.

No Politician Can Praise Unemployment Or Inflation, And There Is No Way Of Combining High Employment With Stable Prices That Does Not Involve Some Control Of Income And Prices. Otherwise The Struggle For More Consumption And More Income To Sustain It-a Struggle That Modern Corporations, Modern Unions And Modern Democracy All Facilitate And Encourage-will Drive Up Prices. Only Heavy Unemployment Will Then Temper This Upward Thrust. Not Many Wish To Confront The Truth That The Modern Economy Gives A Choice Only Between Inflation, Unemployment, Or Controls.

[the] Men Of The Technostructure Are The New And Universal Priesthood. Their Religion Is Business Success; Their Test Of Virtue Is Growth And Profit. Their Bible Is The Computer Printout; Their Communion Bench Is The Committee Room.

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

It Is A Commonplace Of Modern Technology That Problems Have Solutions Before There Is Knowledge Of How They Are To Be Solved.

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

Monetary Policy Suffers From The Unfortunate Absence Of Any Occult Effect. It Has Long Been Clear That Economic Management...would Be Greatly Facilitated If Resort Could Occasionally Be Had To Witchcraft.

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.

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

American Universities

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Attraction Of Power We Take For Granted In Politics.. But In Economics...the Thrust...is For Pecuniary Return, For Money. And I Have Always Felt That Denies In The Economic World A Very Large Part Of The Motivation.

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

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.

No One Was Responsible For The Great Wall Street Crash. No One Engineered The Speculation That Preceded It. Both Were The Product Of Free Choice And Decision Of Hundreds Of Thousands Of Individuals.

The First Goal Of The Technostructure Is Its Own Security.

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.

A Person Buying Ordinary Products In A Supermarket Is In Touch With His Deepest Emotions.

Foresight Is An Imperfect Thing - All Prevision In Economics Is Imperfect.

Imperfect Things

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

Power Is As Power Does.

The Power Of The Corporate Bureaucracy - The Power Of Technostructure (a Term That Did Not Take Off) - Is Something To Which I Still Adhere.

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.

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

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 Not Necessary To Advertise Food To Hungry People, Fuel To Cold People, Or Houses To The Homeless.

A [new Yorker ] Is What It Has Always Been. It Combines Those Who Pursue The Truth With Those Who Pursue The Rewards Of Orthodoxy And Those Who Pursue What Is Comfortable To The Rich.

Money Is A Singular Thing. It Ranks With Love As Man's Greatest Source Of Joy. And With Death As His Greatest Source Of Anxiety. Over All History It Has Oppressed Nearly All People In One Of Two Ways: Either It Has Been Abundant And Very Unreliable, Or Reliable And Very Scarce.

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

But There Is Merit Even In The Mentally Retarded Legislator. He Asks The Questions That Everyone Is Afraid To Ask For Fear Of Seeming Simple.

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

I'm Certainly Going To Support Al Gore Because, On The Whole, He's The More Sensible Figure And You Vote Not For The Perfect But For The Best. Coupled With That Is A Special Situation.

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.

The Enemy Of The Conventional Wisdom Is Not Ideas But The March Of Events.

People Who Are In A Fortunate Position Always Attribute Virtue To What Makes Them So Happy.

Perhaps Never Before Or Since Have So Many People Taken The Measure Of Economic Prospects And Found Them So Favorable As In The Two Days Following The Thursday [24th October 1929] Disaster.

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

Inventions That Are Not Made, Like Babies That Are Not Born, Are Rarely Missed. In The Absence Of New Developments, Old Ones May Seem Very Impressive For Quite A Long While.

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

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