John Kenneth Galbraith

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.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

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.

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.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

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

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.