John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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To suppose that safety-first consists in having a small gamble in a large number of different companies where I have no information to reach a good judgment, as compared with a substantial stake in a company where one's information is adequate, strikes me as a travesty of investment policy.
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I'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
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I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution.
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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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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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One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence.
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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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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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Businessmen have a different set of delusions from politicians; and need, therefore, different handling. They are, however, much milder than politicians, at the same time allured and terrified by the glare of publicity....You could do anything you like with them, if you would treat them (even the big ones) not as wolves and tigers, but as domestic animals by nature, even though they have been badly brought up and not trained as you would wish.
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The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.
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All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas - and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists.
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A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
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In peace time, that is to say, the size of the cake depends on the amount of work done. But in war time the size of the cake is fixed. If we work harder, we can fight better. But we must not consume more.
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The mechanism of reaching equilibrium by means of a rising cost of living, which is vainly pursued by a rising level of wages, will be described in the next chapter. But it is admitted on all hands that this is the worst possible solution.
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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 great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists.
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There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
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Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.
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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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We will not have any more crashes in our time.
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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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There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
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When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.
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It is impossible that the intention of the entrepreneur who has borrowed in order to increase investment can become effective except in substitution for investment by other entrepreneurs which would have occurred otherwise at a faster rate than the public decide to increase their savings...