Observations By John Kenneth Galbraith

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
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In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
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Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
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The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
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The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Galbraith, OC, LL.D (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006) was an influential Canadian-American economist of the 20th century. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of US-style 20th century political liberalism and progressive politics. His books on economic topics were bestsellers in the late 1950s and during the 1960s.

Galbraith was a prolific author, producing four dozen books and over a thousand articles on various subjects. His most famous works were perhaps a popular trilogy of books on economics, "American Capitalism" (1952), "The Affluent Society (1958)", and "The New Industrial State" (1967). He taught at Harvard University for many years. Galbraith was also active in politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; and among other roles served as U.S. ambassador to India under Kennedy.

He was one of the few two-time recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, receiving one from President Truman in 1946 and another from President Bill Clinton in 2000. He was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, for his contributions to strengthening ties between India and the United States.