John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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We will not have any more crashes in our time.
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Variant reported in Time magazine, Monday, Feb. 17, 1947
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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 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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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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There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
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Ideas shape the course of history.
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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 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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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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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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Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
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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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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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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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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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The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
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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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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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The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.
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But my lord, when we addressed this issue a few years ago, didn't you argue the other side?" He said, "That's true, but when I get more evidence I sometimes change my mind. What do you do?