John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.

When I was a young fellow I was very much disturbed by there being some people with lots of money and lots of people with no money.

There are but two families in the world … The haves and the have-nots.

God help the rich, the poor can look after themselves

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

The poor developed an envy and an extreme jealousy, born of the realization that they are as worthy, or even more worthy than the wealthy, and are nonetheless afflicted with poverty, hunger, misery, and contempt.

The world has grown rich and refined, but chiefly by the efforts of those who themselves continue poor and ignorant.

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

If everybody lives in the same way, there's something almost narcotizing about it, but the true misery of economic class difference is knowing that you can't have what somebody else does.

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

When the rich think about the poor, they have poor ideas.

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

The rich don’t want the poor to get ahead of them.

The central issue of our time remains the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger.

The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich

There are only two families in the whole world, my old grandmother used to say, The Haves and the Have-Nots.

Only the poor are forbidden to beg.

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing

You can have class in the ghetto and trash in the White House.