john kenneth Galbraith

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

“Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell then what they wanted.”

“I have a feeling that at any time about three million Americans can be had for any militant reaction against the law, decency, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, compassion and the rule of reason.”

“It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.”

“It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is.”

“It is impossible in a democratic society to think of a single measure for the improvement of social well-being which is not subject to subversion by ill-conceived minority or even majority pressures.”

“Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups.”

“Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.”

“One does not have to keep bad government in to keep communists out.”

“Talk of revolution is one way of avoiding reality.”

“The conservative is led by disposition, not unmixed with pecuniary self-interest, to adhere to the familiar and the established.”

“The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor.”

“The critics were asking that we postpone consideration of the causes of poverty until no one was poor.”

“The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.”

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