Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

More from John Kenneth Galbraith

• Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay.
• If all else fails immortality can always be assured by adequate error.
• 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.
• In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
• Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
• Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.