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Moreover, regulatory bodies, like the people who comprise them, have a marked life cycle. In youth they are vigorous, aggressive, evangelistic, and even intolerant. Later they mellow, and in old age — after a matter of ten or fifteen years — they become, with some exceptions, either an arm of the industry they are regulating or senile.

— John Kenneth Galbraith The Great Crash, 1929 (1954)

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More quotes by John Kenneth Galbraith

When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover.

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.

A Journey Through Economic Time (1994)

American university presidents are a nervous breed; I have never thought well of them as a class.

The Age of Uncertainty (1977)

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

The Affluent Society (1958)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Kenneth Galbraith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.