John Kenneth Galbraith

"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."

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

"We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect."

From the NY Times obit: "He was not regarded by his peers as among the top-ranked theorists and scholars. ... Some suggested that Mr. Galbraith's liberalism crippled his influence."