John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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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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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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We will not have any more crashes in our time.
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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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If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.
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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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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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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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The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
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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 avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
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But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future.
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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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I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organizing investments.
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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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The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
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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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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 doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
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If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp.
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There was an attraction at first that Mr Baldwin should not be clever. But when he forever sentimentalises about his own stupidity, the charm is broken.
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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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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.