John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
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Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.
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All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas - and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists.
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The numeric system was invented to help man to put order in the chaos of the world.
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Ideas shape the course of history.
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We will not have any more crashes in our time.
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Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole.
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Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
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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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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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Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
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The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
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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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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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Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information?
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Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
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Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
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A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances, and to confess a conventional respectability, which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men.
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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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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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Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.
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The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.
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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 difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.