John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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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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There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
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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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It is Enterprise which build and improves the world's possessions...If Enterprise is afoot, Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, Wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.
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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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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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We will not have any more crashes in our time.
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For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
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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 behaviour that he should be eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of the average opinion. If he is successful, that will only confirm the general belief in his rashness; and if in the short run he is unsuccessful, which is very likely, he will not receive much mercy. Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
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The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
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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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Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
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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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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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The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
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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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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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Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.
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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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Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
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The general character of our solution must be, therefore, that it withdraws from expenditure a proportion of the increased earnings. This is the only way, apart from shortages of goods or higher prices, by which we can secure a balance between money to be spent and goods to be bought.
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Unlike physics, for example, such parts of the bare bones of economic theory as are expressible in mathematical form are extremely easy compared with the economic interpretation of the complex and incompletely known facts of experience, and lead one a very little way towards establishing useful results.
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Like all his type, Newton was wholly aloof from women.
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It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.