John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated.
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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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Economic privation proceeds by easy stages, and so long as men suffer it patiently the outside world cares little.
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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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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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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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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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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 were endless possibilities, not out of reach.
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Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
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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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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 study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order.
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But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future.
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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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Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
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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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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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Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information?
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The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
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Nothing can preserve the integrity of contact between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the state to revise what has become intolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are too great. If the accretions of vested interests were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half.
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It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
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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.