John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes


Ideas are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Madmen in authority who hear voices in the air are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribblers of a few years back. Sooner or later, it is ideas, rather than vested interests, which are dangerous for good or for evil.


Citations

John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908–2006, Economist, U. S. Ambassador to India (Democrat), 1936

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Even sophisticated societies have anti-intellectual movements. This happened in revolutionary France, but also at times even in the United States. In 2012, for example, Rick Santorum a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination called President Obama a “snob” for wanting to enable all students to go to college. Santorum was appealing to an anti-intellectual movement in the country that distrusted intellectuals as “elites.”


John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
  • Born: October 15, 1908
  • Died: April 29, 2006
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Economist

John Kenneth Galbraith OC, also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official and intellectual. A leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism, his books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s. As an economist, he leaned toward post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective.