John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.

There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't.

When we are accustomed to use bad reasons for proving natural effects, we are not willing to receive good reasons when they are discovered

Dogmatism makes for scientific anemia.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

You will always find a few people in any area that would like things done completely their way.

Nothing so obstinately stands in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion. While nothing is so foolish and baseless.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

Consistency frequently launches its devotees into obstinacy.

Those who never retract their opinions, love themselves more than they love truth.

It comes to pass that men do so magnify their own opinions, and are as censorious of any that differ from them in lesser things

Most men … can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives

There is a troublesome humor some men have, that if they may not lead, they will not follow; but had rather a thing were never done, than not done their own way, tho' other ways very desirable.

I don't like to be proved wrong.

Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.

People can be in a prison of their own mind. [There are] people who don't have their hearts open to other people's ideas, and can't listen to other people's ideas without feeling like they're being slapped in the face. Those people are more in a prison.

Once you arrive at an interpretation which you are comfortable in giving, no matter how specious it might be, and you are comfortable doing it, you stay there, you just stay there, and the facts are not going to change you.

There is no man so blind as one who has made up his mind.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakness to admit that a belief to which we have once committed ourselves is wrong. We get so identified with an idea that it is literally a pet notion and we rise to its defense and stop our eyes and ears to anything different.

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.