John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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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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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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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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It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary. Moreover, the necessary measures of socialization can be introduced gradually and without a break in the general traditions of society.
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I am myself impressed by the great social advantages of increasing the stock of capital until it ceases to be scarce.
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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 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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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.
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It is preferable to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur, and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand. This is why we have been able to take labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system, apart from units of money and of time.
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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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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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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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If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.
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If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.
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When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.
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Gold is a relic from a time when government's were less trustworthy in these matters currency debasement than they are now.
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When the facts change, I change my mind.
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Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis, and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.
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Never in history was there a method devised of such efficacy for setting each country's advantage at variance with its neighbours' as the international gold standard.
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The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.
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I wish I'd drunk more champagne.
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The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
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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.