John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

For me, Warhol made so much sense.

Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation.

I really like the pop culture materials of everyday life, but used in some way that elevates them to something you notice and care about.

If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

TV likes you to talk about the superficial.

When I see a billboard that literally just has five names, and they're all A-listers, I'm just like, What is that bringing to the world that's new?

There are always pluses and minus to commercialization. It broadcasts something to the masses. So that's the plus. The minus is it may lose some of its meaning if you dilute it.

I feel like it's such an exercise in, like, several things to read a ton of 'Cosmo's or 'Glamour's or whatever, all at once. Because you start realizing how they're just talking about nothing for many pages, and they sort of lull you into this hypnotic state.

We use the term pop in the art world, as in Pop Art, but we forget that its root is popular - popular culture.

Advertising is the most potent influence in adapting and changing the habits and modes of life affecting what we eat, what we wear, and the work and play of a whole nation.

I would like to take this opportunity [on Letterman] just to tell the press to KISS MY SKINNY WHITE ASS!

To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals' experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes.

The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. (128)

Every ‘mistake’ is an opportunity in jazz.

The thing is, that great actors are everywhere. They're everywhere. They're doing good parts on television. They're doing television commercials. They're doing local theater. There are so few opportunities.

Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.

If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and God knows what else that's gloriously normal.

Enormous amounts of money are spent for publicity. As a result, large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products, at the least useless, and often harmful, have become a necessity for civilized men.

Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became a major industry and the middle class bought radios to hear the ads and cars to get to the stores. ... But there is no question that the consumer culture had begun to crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years following World War II.

Young people know they are being betrayed by he mass electronic media. It caricatures them, caricatures others. It is not really about them though it targets them as consumers.

Every time you quit, someone else gets your prize. Every time you make a mistake, you get closer to yours.

Advertising is 'an evil service'.

Be very careful of what you allow to infiltrate your consciousness and subconsciousness. When you watch too much television, you'll start to feel inferior from all the commercials hard selling the idea that you're not complete unless you buy their product. The ad agencies appeal to your fear of not being wanted or loved. It's the same with the local news. They get you to stay tuned with a constant stream of fear tactics. It's as if our culture is addicted to fear and the flat screen is our drug dealer. Don't allow that crap into your head!