John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Nobody wants to be against technology, but I think that regulators should not - and people should not - assume that faster is always better in markets.

We can't allow multinational oil companies boasting of record profits to gouge consumers... We must do what we can to fix this problem.

I've never been antiregulation. I've always believed that raw, unregulated capitalism doesn't work.

I think there's a point to regulating, because there are snake oil companies.

In this country in colonial days the laws were very strict against combinations and contracts in restraint of trade. But here again there was a gradual amelioration of the laws, until co-operation was permitted along many lines, including division of territory, limitation of output, and even fixing of prices; provided always that, as a result of the co-operation, the combinations or contracts did not result in monopoly, were not general, were not immoral, and were not contrary to public policy.

The only way you can stop the unregulated monopoly ... from gouging ... is to introduce competition.

Effective competition requires that traders have large freedom of action when conducting their own affairs.

Likewise let butchers, fishmongers, hostlers, brewers, bakers, pullers and all other vendors of any victuals, be bound to sell such victuals for a reasonable price, having regard for the price at which such victuals are sold in the adjoining places: so that such vendors may have moderate gains, not excessive…

No Citizen of the United States of North America Shall be obliged to purchase any Goods against his will but on the contrary shall be allowed to purchase whatever it Pleaseth him.

It is better to have a cat and mouse game where the cat has the upper hand than a cat and mouse game where the mice are ruling. Because the latter means that the market participants are given free range. That was actually the big misconception of our national hero Ronald Reagan, who always talked about the magic of the market.

A properly functioning free market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as crabgrass springs from suburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores... Capitalism is a government program.

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will.

The freer the market is and the more respect you have for private property, the better the environment is protected.

Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws.

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others.

No freedom is secure if your property rights are not secure.

I look in a right of property - on the right of individuals, to have and to own, for their own separate and selfish use and enjoyments, the produce of their own industry, with power freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner most agreeable to themselves, as essential to the welfare and even to the continued existence of society.

Man has a primary property right to his person and his labor.

You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.

When we control business in the public interest we are also bound to encourage it in the public interest or it will be a bad thing for everybody and worst of all for those on whose behalf the control is nominally exercised.

Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience, which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection for which the public faith is pledged by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another mans right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.

I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.