Daily Inspiration Quote by John Kenneth Galbraith

Galbraith’s line lands because it weaponizes the blandest phrase in international politics: “useful talks.” He treats it like a diplomatic weather report - carefully worded, technically accurate, and designed to conceal whether anyone got soaked. The joke works with economist’s precision: he sets up “few ironclad rules,” then offers the one rule that allegedly never breaks, flipping diplomacy’s self-importance into a predictable output. If officials say the meeting was “useful,” the real takeaway is that it was safely inconclusive. “Useful” becomes a euphemism for “no one stormed out,” not “we moved history.”

The intent is less to sneer at negotiation than to expose its public-facing theater. Diplomacy has two audiences: the people in the room, and everyone else. For the second audience - voters, markets, allies, adversaries - language must signal stability, momentum, and competence without committing to details that can be weaponized later. “Useful” is the perfect placeholder: positive enough to avoid panic, vague enough to avoid verification. It’s a bureaucratic non-event, packaged as progress.

Context matters: Galbraith watched mid-century statecraft up close, when Cold War summits and communiques often substituted process for breakthrough. His subtext is that diplomacy’s success frequently depends on ambiguity, and that ambiguity has a verbal fingerprint. The line isn’t just cynical; it’s diagnostic. It teaches you how to read power’s public prose: when officials brag about the productivity of the conversation, they’re often quietly admitting that the conversation was the product.