John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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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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It is the long-term investor...who will in practice come in for the most criticism... For it is the essence of his behavior that he should be eccentric, unconventional, and rash in the eyes of average opinion...
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Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
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There were endless possibilities, not out of reach.
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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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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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But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital.
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The central principle of investment is to go contrary to the general opinion, on the grounds that if everyone agreed about its merits, the investment is inevitably too dear and therefore unattractive.
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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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For each individual it is a great advantage to retain the rights over the fruits of his labour even though he must put off the enjoyment of them. His personal wealth is thus increased. For that is what wealth is,-command of the right to postponed consumption.
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If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.
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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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The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order.
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Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
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But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future.
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Variant reported in Time magazine, Monday, Feb. 17, 1947
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I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
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It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
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Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.
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I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx .
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The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.
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When the facts change, I change my mind.
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The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.
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Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information?