Fire and Knowledge

John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society

John Kenneth Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, teacher and diplomat and an unapologetically liberal member of the political and academic establishment that he needled in prolific writings for more than half a century, died yesterday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97….

Mr. Galbraith was one of the most widely read authors in the history of economics; among his 33 books was “The Affluent Society” (1958), one of those rare works that forces a nation to re-examine its values. He wrote fluidly, even on complex topics, and many of his compelling phrases — among them “the affluent society,” “conventional wisdom” and “countervailing power” — became part of the language.

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 43

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 42

Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Which would be the most likely to cut his fingers? … To my astonishment I was informed on leaving on leaving college that I had studied navigation!—why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 42

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 30

A powerful and moving photo documentary about the effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Horrible. Lord have mercy. When a nuclear power plant is proposed in your neighborhood, remember this.

An interesting life is the supreme concept of dullards.

–Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970), p. 229

Jane Jacobs is dead at 89