John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

I think that much of the truth has been withheld from the American people.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

Nothing real or truthful makes its way to TV unless you are smart and know how to sneak it in, and I would tell you how I did it, but then I would have to kill you.

It is the oldest story in the coverage of Government: The failure to tell the truth.

Richard Helms … did not tell the truth to the Warren Commission when he testified. It is clear that the CIA “did have an axe to grind” during our investigation.

In his heart everyone knows that the only people who get rich from the "get rich quick" books are those who write them.

That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.

The person of truth must be covered with bodyguards of lies.

Always I'm working on some of book. That's the way I make a living.

If we consider my latest book, Strategie de la deception, what we need to focus on are the other aspects of the same phenomenon.

Language can be very adept at hiding the truth.

My way of writing a book is completely disorganized - to hurl myself at the problem, over and over.

I can tell you that the job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is about as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place.

Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.

...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.

Tell the truth, but lead so improbable a life that the truth will never be believed.

I didn't want to write another book about fraudulence.

Do nothing that you would not like God to see. Say nothing you would not like God to hear. Write nothing you would not like God to read. Go no place where you would not like God to find you. Read no book of which you would not like God to say, "Show it to Me." Never spend your time in such a way that you would not like to have God say, "What are you doing?

The books are always there, just the way you wrote them. The plays often don't turn out the way you wanted them to because in the theater, you're always involved with collaborators and they don't always see the work the way you do.

If you have something to say and say nothing, you are really telling a lie.

Ever read any [Friedrich] Hayek? He's great. The Road To Serfdom is like... I'm not a big political-science reader, but I actually dog-eared my copy. I ended up going back through it and writing a précis, I was so impressed by this book. It's all about what happens when government tries to make everything right.

The only way you can control people is to lie to them. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.

Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.