“Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.”
More from John Kenneth Galbraith on Philosophy
“If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”
“In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth.”
“We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.”
“If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale”
“The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience.”
“There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”
“When people are least sure they are often most dogmatic.”
“If all else fails immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”
“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”
“Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfaction...”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Isaac Asimov
13 quotes“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”