John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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Economics is a very dangerous science.
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I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
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The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
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By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
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Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion - how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.
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Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit.
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If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
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Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes a bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done.
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Nothing can be settled in isolation. Every use of our resources is at the expense of an alternative use.
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The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.
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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.
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The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
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Men will not always die quietly.
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They offer me neither food nor drink - intellectual nor spiritual consolation... Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard, it is not safe, or calculated to preserve from the spoilers that degree of civilisation which we have already attained.
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Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.
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If Mr. Lloyd George had no good qualities, no charms, no fascinations, he would not be dangerous. If he were not a syren, we need not fear the whirlpools.
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This state of affairs is not an inevitable consequence of a decreased capacity to produce wealth. I see no reason why, with good management, real wages need be reduced on the average. It is the consequence of a misguided monetary policy.
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Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better.
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As quoted in The Economist (13 February 1982), p. 11
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His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen it through.
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The old saying holds. Owe your banker £1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.
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In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.
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The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.
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There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.