John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.
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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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Newton was a judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides...
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In this autumn of 1919, in which I write, we are at the dead season of our fortunes.
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It is investment, i.e. the increased production of material wealth in the shape of capital goods, which alone increases national wealth.
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Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits-a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.
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Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.
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Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel - these are things which should in their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible and above all let finance be primarily national.
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Canada is a place of infinite promise. We like the people, and if one ever had to emigrate, this would be the destination, not the U.S.A. The hills, lakes and forests make it a place of peace and repose of the mind, such as one never finds in the U.S.A.
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The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45, Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model, and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.
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For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth.
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Nevertheless, if we contemplate a society with a somewhat stable wage-unit, with national characteristics which determine the propensity to consume and the preference for liquidity, and with a monetary system which rigidly links the quantity of money to the stock of the precious metals, it will be essential for the maintenance of prosperity that the authorities should pay close attention to the state of the balance of trade. For a favourable balance, provided it is not too large, will prove extremely stimulating; whilst an unfavourable balance may soon produce a state of persistent depression.
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Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.
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It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens.
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To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol - a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in heart and cheerful of spirit.
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When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?
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The principle objectives in life are love, the creation and enjoyment if aesthetic experience, the pursuit of knowledge. Love comes a long way first.
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I can't remember my telephone number, but I know it was in the high numbers.
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It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
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Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.
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When I find new information I change my mind; What do you do?
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When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.
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It's not bringing in the new ideas that's so hard; it's getting rid of the old ones.
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I am trying to re-shape and improve my central position.