John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Economy is not baseball, where the game is always played by the same rules.

The Russian economy is about the size of the Italian economy; it's very small, and Russia's military force is larger than it was, because Putin's been investing in it, but it still doesn't compare to that of the United States, and his reach and aim still don't compare.

Society is best served when the means of production are in the possession of those who know how to use them best.

It's smart to be thrifty.

Markets are the best way to allocate resources.

Under Bill Clinton we had a roaring economy that looked really good.

The left hates capitalism, not because of freedom and liberty - although they do. But the primary they hate capitalism is that it is the most efficient engine to create wealth for the greatest number of people in a society that has ever been devised. Nobody's ever claimed it's perfect. Nobody's ever said it's flawless. But it's better than anything else out there, particularly anything left has to offer.

A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded.

If I gave you now, $10 as a gift, how happy would you be? Would you be happy, is the marginal $10, the best use of $10 you can use? Of course not. If I have you a CD, you know exactly what you are getting and you will have a value for it. So, money has lots of problems with it.

Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

Waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both.

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.

Yes to market economy, no to market society.

The much-maligned price system works not only to secure supply but to conserve. [...] Profits and prices are the street signs of the economy. Only fools flout them.

Economists don't seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology.

A man usually values that most for which he has labored; he uses that most frugally which he has toiled hour by hour and day by day to acquire.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property.

It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing.

We want to get full value out of labour so that we may be able to pay it full value. It is use - not conservation - that interests us.

The world political system is till based on the concept of the national sovereign state. For the first time therefore, in three hundred years economy and sovereignty are becoming divorced from each other.

What the carburetor, sparkplug and self-starter are to an automobile, initiative, private enterprise and executive ability are to industry as a whole, including the wage earner, wage payer, wage spender and wage saver, i.e., the investor. If the sparkplug and self-starter get out of commission, the car will come to a standstill.

Some people say Russia is running at 50 percent of its gross domestic product under that during the Communist period. In fact, none of the countries seems to have recovered the level that they had under communism, although the other countries in Eastern Europe are doing better than Russia and particularly the Czech Republic seems to be doing modestly well. East Germany I can't count because they have a rich uncle. You have economic benefits which have nothing to do with the workings of the system.

A term like capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there's such a range of different kinds of market economies.

While I have questions about the language used in describing the two economic systems, I think people have fairly good gut sense of the difference between socialism and capitalism.

America is stronger than Russia. Our economy is 16 times larger than the Russian economy.