John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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It is a grand book worthy of one’s hopes of you. A most powerful piece of well organized analysis with high aesthetic qualities, though written more perhaps than you see yourself for the cognoscenti in the temple and not for those at the gate. Anyhow I prefer it for intellectual enjoyment to any recent attempts in this vein.
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How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?
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I'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
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If I am right in supposing it to be comparatively easy to make capital-goods so abundant that the marginal efficiency of capital is zero, this may be the most sensible way of gradually getting rid of many of the objectionable features of capitalism.
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For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
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Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.
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There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
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If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.
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For my part I think that capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable.
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By what modus operandi does credit restriction attain this result? In no other way than by the deliberate intensification of unemployment.
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The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, - but generally to be obtained at your neighbor's expense.
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To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.
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Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.
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If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy.
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The appropriate time for the ultimate release of the deposits will have arrived at the onset of the first post-war slump.
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Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
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I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the means of securing an approximation to full employment.
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Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant's profit, we have begun to change our civilization.
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One blames politicians, not for inconsistency but for obstinacy. They are the interpreters, not the masters, of our fate. It is their job, in fact, to register the fact accompli.
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It is the long term investor who will in practice come in for the most criticism. For it is the essence of his behaviour that he should be eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of the average opinion. If he is successful, that will only confirm the general belief in his rashness; and if in the short run he is unsuccessful, which is very likely, he will not receive much mercy. Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
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Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
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I feel no shame at being found still owning a share when the bottom of the market comes…I would go much further than that. I should say that it is from time to time the duty of a serious investor to accept the depreciation of his holdings with equanimity and without reproaching himself. … An investor…should be aiming primarily at long-period results, and should be solely judged by these.
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Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.
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It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.