John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

I predict, not because I know, but because I'm asked.

I never quite trust futurists because I think they're kind of telling us what they think our future should be.

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.

I try not to get involved in the business of prediction. It's a quick way to look like an idiot.

Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge.

Predictions are preposterous.

We turn to experts to tell us the future, even though they have not the foggiest idea themselves. It is a practice that goes back thousands of years.

The experts, for all their superior knowledge, rarely do better than chance in predicting future events.

One of the things that I think we have learned is that we should all be very careful about making predictions about the future.

Newspapers tell beforehand what is going to happen - maybe.

I do not like to talk about the future. I don't like to be one of those people. It's so easy to have a very vague idea and say, oh, computers will be 3D-ish and then 10 years later I'll say I predicted it 10 years ahead. I don't think that's honest and I don't think that's valid and worth anything.

We can speculate. Last time I checked, the future doesn't take my advice.

The press always wants to know how many people will be killed or how much it will cost, but the answers to those questions are not knowable.

A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice.

I don't know what will happen 100 years from now.

The game of investing is one of making better predictions about the future than other people. How are you going to do that? One way is to limit your tries to areas of competence. If you try to predict the future of everything, you attempt too much.

We need to stop, and admit it: we have a prediction problem. We love to predict things—and we aren’t very good at it.

So, regarding the time frame, I'm only too willing to admit that my crystal ball, like everybody else's, is cracked. If I could predict precisely, I would have started predicting the stock market and would now be living with a bunch of young women on Bora Bora, having bought it.

I cannot give any assurances. I'm not in that business. I haven't been, and I don't intend to get into it. People who try to make predictions about things or assurances often find they're wrong.

If ... the past may be no Rule for the future, all Experience becomes useless and can give rise to no Inferences or Conclusions.

You can't see the future, there's no such thing. It's all bets. You'll never get the same answer from two seers. But that doesn't mean either of them's wrong.

I deal in facts, not forecasting the future. That's crystal ball stuff. That doesn't work.

Prediction is difficult - particularly when it involves the future.

All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.