The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.
John Kenneth GalbraithOf late I have searched diligently to discover the advantages of age, and there is, I have concluded, only one. It is that lovely women treat your approaches with understanding rather than with disdain.
John Kenneth GalbraithNo hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food.
John Kenneth GalbraithComplexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.
John Kenneth GalbraithThe accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.
John Kenneth Galbraith