John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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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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Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.
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The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.
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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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There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
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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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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 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 work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
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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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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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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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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 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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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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The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
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I wish I'd drunk more champagne.
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Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
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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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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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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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Economic privation proceeds by easy stages, and so long as men suffer it patiently the outside world cares little.
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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.