The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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

— John Kenneth Galbraith

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

The members of the functional and socially mobilized under class must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable. There could be a disturbing feeling, however fleeting, of unease, even guilt.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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... & ... Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.–

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Then the shit hit the fan.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

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.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.

— John Kenneth Galbraith