John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
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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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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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I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
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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'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
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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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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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Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
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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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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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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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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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The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom.
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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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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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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 glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, - but generally to be obtained at your neighbor's expense.
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Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.
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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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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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Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
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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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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.