John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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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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There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
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It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.
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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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I'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
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The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.
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Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.
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I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
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In the long run we are all dead.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
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Jevons saw the kettle boil and cried out with the delighted voice of a child; Marshall too had seen the kettle boil and sat down silently to build an engine.
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Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.