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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.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

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When You See Reference

John Kenneth Galbraith

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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.

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If All Else Fails Immortality Can Always Be Assured By Adequate Error.

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.

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

It Was Herbert Spencer, Not Charles Darwin, Who Coined The Phrase Survival Of The Fittest.

Survival Of The Fittest

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

Economics Is Not An Exact Science.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We Talk Of The Enormous Virtues Of Work, But It Turns Out That That Is Mostly For The Poor. If You're Rich Enough Or If You're A College Professor, The Virtue Lies In Leisure And The Use You Make Of Your Leisure Time.

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

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

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

Monetary Policy

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.

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

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

I Write With Two Things In Mind. I Want To Be Right With My Fellow Economists. After All, I've Made My Life As A Professional Economist, So I'm Careful That My Economics Is As It Should Be. But I Have Long Felt That There's No Economic Proposition That Can't Be Stated In Clear, Accessible Language. So I Try To Be Right With My Fellow Economists, But I Try To Have An Audience Of Any Interested, Intelligent Person.

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

With The American Failure Came World Failure.

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

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

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

Nothing In Our Time Is More Interesting Than The Erstwhile Capitalist Corporation And The Erstwhile Communist Firm Should, Under The Imperatives Of Organization, Come Together As Oligarchies Of Their Own Members.

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

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.

Financial Capacity And Political Perspicacity Are Inversely Correlated. Long-run Salvation By Men Of Business Has Never Been Highly Regarded If It Means Disturbance Of Orderly Life And Convenience In The Present. So Inaction Will Be Advocated In The Present Even Though It Means Deep Trouble In The Future. Here, At Least Equally With Communism, Lies The Threat To Capitalism. It Is What Causes Men Who Know That Things Are Going Quite Wrong To Say That Things Are Fundamentally Sound.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Even In Such A Time Of Madness As The Late Twenties, A Great Many Man In Wall Street Remained Quite Sane. But They Also Remained Very Quiet. The Sense Of Responsibility In The Financial Community For The Community As A Whole Is Not Small. It Is Nearly Nil. Perhaps This Is Inherent. In A Community Where The Primary Concern Is Making Money, One Of The Necessary Rules Is To Live And Let Live. To Speak Out Against Madness May Be To Ruin Those Who Have Succumbed To It. So The Wise In Wall Street Are Nearly Always Silent. The Foolish Thus Have The Field To Themselves. None Rebukes Them.

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

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.

Clearly The Most Unfortunate People Are Those Who Must Do The Same Thing Over And Over Again, Every Minute, Or Perhaps Twenty To The Minute. They Deserve The Shortest Hours And The Highest Pay.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

The Industrial System Requires That Prices Be Under Effective Control. And It Seeks The Greatest Possible Influence Over What Buyers Take At The Established Prices.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

There Are Two Kinds Of Forecasters: Those Who Don’t Know, And Those Who Don’t Know They Don’t Know.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

All, The Intelligent And Stupid, Diligent And Idle, Have Been Swept Along On A Current Of Increased Output That, In The Usual Case, Owed Nothing Whatever To Their Efforts.

If You're Rich You Can Buy Books. If You're Poor, You Need A Library.

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

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.

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

In The United States All Business Not Transacted Over The Telephone Is Accomplished In Conjunction With Alcohol Or Food, Often Under Conditions Of Advanced Intoxication. This Is A Fact Of The Utmost Importance For The Visitor Of Limited Funds... For It Means That The Most Expensive Restaurants Are, With Rare Exceptions, The Worst.

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.

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

Imperfect Things

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

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

We Have A Swarm Of People In The Stock Market - Not Out Of Knowledge, Not Out Of Expectation, But Out Of Basically A Gambling Instinct, The Hope That Prices Will Go Up.

The First Goal Of The Technostructure Is Its Own Security.

Truth Has Anciently Been Called The First Casualty Of War. Money May, In Fact, Have Priority.

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.

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

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.

Superficial Observers Have Long Criticized The United States For Making A Fetish Of Youth. This Is Unfair. Uniquely Among Modern Organs Of Public And Private Administration, Its National Legislature Rewards Senility.

Nothing So Weakens Government As Persistent Inflation.

The Spirit Should Never Grow Old.

I Do The Best With What Exists.

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

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.

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.

It Is Not The Individual's Right To Buy That Is Being Protected. Rather, It Is The Seller's Right To Manage The Individual.

No Solution [to The Problem Of Poverty] Is So Effective As Providing Income To The Poor. Whether In The Form Of Food, Housing, Health Services, Education Or Money, Income Is An Excellent Antidote For Deprivation. No Truth Has Spawned So Much Ingenious Evasion.

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.

Conscience Is Better Served By A Myth.

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

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

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

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.

However, It Is Safe To Say That At The Peak In 1929 The Number Of Active Speculators Was Less - And Probably Was Much Less - Than A Million.

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

Private Enterprise Did Not Get Us Atomic Energy.

Milton Friedman’s Misfortune Is That His Economic Policies Have Been Tried.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Money Is What Fueled The Industrial Society. But In The Informational Society, The Fuel, The Power, Is Knowledge. One Has Now Come To See A New Class Structure Divided By Those Who Have Information And Those Who Must Function Out Of Ignorance. This New Class Has Its Power Not From Money, Not From Land, But From Knowledge.

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.

There Can Be Few Fields Of Human Endeavor In Which History Counts For So Little As In The World Of Finance.past Experience, To The Extent That It Is Part Of Memory At All, Is Dismissed As The Primitive Refuge Of The Those Who Do Not Have Insight To Appreciate The Incredible Wonders Of The Present.

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.

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. . .

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

Every Corner Of The Public Psyche Is Canvassed By Some Of The Most Talented Citizens To See If The Desire For Some Merchandisable Product Can Be Cultivated.

In Economics, Hope And Faith Coexist With Great Scientific Pretension And Also A Deep Desire For Respectability.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Oldest Problem In Economic Education Is How To Exclude The Incompetent. A Certain Glib Mastery Of Verbiage-the Ability To Speak Portentously And Sententiously About The Relation Of Money Supply To The Price Level-is Easy For The Unlearned And May Even Be Aided By A Mildly Enfeebled Intellect. The Requirement That There Be Ability To Master Difficult Models, Including Ones For Which Mathematical Competence Is Required, Is A Highly Useful Screening Device.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Great Depression

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.

We Can Safely Abandon The Doctrine Of The Eighties, Namely That The Rich Were Not Working Because They Had Too Little Money, The Poor Because They Had Much.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

In The World Of Minor Lunacy The Behaviour Of Both The Utterly Rational And The Totally Insane Seems Equally Odd.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Only In Very Recent Times Has The Average Man Been A Source Of Savings.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

It Is In The Long Run That The Corporation Lives.

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.

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.

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

The Traveler To The United States Will Do Wellto Prepare Himself For The Class-consciousness Of The Natives. This Differs From The Already Familiar English Version In Being More Extreme And Based More Firmly On The Conviction That The Class To Which The Speaker Belongs Is Inherently Superior To All Others.

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

Some Things Were Never Meant To Be Recycled.

Some Things Are Meant To Be

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

In All Modern Depressions, Recessions, Or Growth-correction, As Variously They Are Called, We Never Miss The Goods That Are Not Produced. We Miss Only The Opportunities For The Labour - For The Jobs - That Are Not Provided.

I Accept The Global Complex And Global Trade More Than Do Some Of My Liberal Colleagues Because I Consider This A Wise Alternative To National Tension And Conflict.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

There Are Times In Politics When You Must Be On The Right Side And Lose.

I Begin With The Renaming Of The System. It Used To Be Capitalism. But That Evokes [karl] Marx And [john] Rockefeller. So Now We Speak Of The Market System. That Is A Nice Bland Expression, Which Forgets Those Off-color References.

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.

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Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

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