John Kenneth Galbraith citáty

page 4

„Byť bohatým má svoje prednosti; síce sa ľudia dosť často pokúšali dokázať opak tohto tvrdenia, ale nikdy sa to nepodarilo tak naozaj.“

„Čím väčšie je bohatstvo, tým hrubšia je vrstva špiny.“

„Jeden z najlepších kúskov ekonomickej múdrosti je vedieť, čo neviete.“

„Najšťastnejší čas v živote hociktorého človeka je tesne po prvom rozvode.“

„Peniaze sa odlišujú od auta alebo od milenky tým, že sú rovnako dôležité pre tých, ktorí ich majú, aj pre tých, ktorí ich nemajú.“

„Politika nie je umením možného. Spočíva vo voľbe medzi katastrofálnym a nestráviteľným.“

„Reklama je iba plytvanie peniazmi, pretože nevytvára žiadne naozajstné hodnoty.“

„V kapitalizme človek vykorisťuje človeka. V komunizme je to práve naopak.“

„V politike sú časy, keď musíte byť na tej správnej strane a prehrať.“

“However, Hoover had converted the simple business ritual of reassurance into a major instrument of public policy.”

“Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.”

“Hitler also anticipated modern economic policy... by recognizing that a rapid approach to full employment was only possible if it was combined with wage and price controls. That a nation oppressed by economic fear would respond to Hitler as Americans did to F. D. R. is not surprising.”

“To a few alarmed observers it seemed as though Wall Street were by way of devouring all the money of the entire world. However, in accordance with the cultural practice, as the summer passed, the sound and responsible spokesmen decried not the increase in brokers' loans, but those who insisted on attaching significance to this trend.”

“There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.”

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

“The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon.”

“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.”

“In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.”

“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.”

“Our political life favors the extremes of speech; the man who is gifted in the arts of abuse is bound to be a notable, if not always a great figure.”

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared with that of the rich.”

“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 asyndicate that was driving the market down.”

“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.”

“Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.”

“Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.”

“There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.”

“The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware.”

“We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.”

“The family which takes its 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 is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”