American - Economist | October 15, 1908 - April 29, 2006
We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?
John Kenneth Galbraith
WhyFictionBiographyWhy Not
A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.
PowerIgnoranceBookDevilDoing
Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.
HumorValueAttentionPersonWho
There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.
RulesNothingDiplomacyReportsFew
The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.
New YorkLongNewLondonTokyoBeen
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.
WisdomIdeasEnemyMarchEvents
The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.
GreatTimeLaborEconomicStill
It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
GoodGoalsGovernmentAesthetic
By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man.
AgeRomanticManSmallNow
We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
MoneyRichPoorLittleWorkingMuch
War remains the decisive human failure.
FailureWarHumanDecisiveRemains
Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
SufferingBelieveOthersAnything
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