John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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So it is not an accident that the Nazi lads vent a particular fury against Einstein. He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast intellectualist, individualist, supernationalist, pacifist, inky, plump... How should they know the glory of the free-ranging intellect and soft objective sympathy to whom money and violence, drink and blood and pomp, mean absolutely nothing?
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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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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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Logic, like lyrical poetry, is no employment for the middle-aged,
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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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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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Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.
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In the long run we are all dead.
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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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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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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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It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.
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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...
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Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.
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Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.
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The duty of 'saving' became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.
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Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated.
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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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It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.
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The atomic hypothesis which had worked so splendidly in Physics breaks down in Psychics.
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It economics is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions.
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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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Silvio Gesell's chiefwork is written in cool and scientific terms, although it is run through by a more passionate and charged devotion to social justice than many think fit for a scholar. I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell then from that of Marx.