John Maynard Keynes Quotes

The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, — abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe.

By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.

Wage flexibility may not cure an ailing economy, but simply make the rich richer and the poor poorer; you get an economy driven not by wages, but by assets and if those assets stay in the same hands, there is no dynamism and social mobility.

— he, indeed, who gave fewest pledges to Fortune, has yet suffered her heaviest visitations.

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

In the long run we are all dead

Those who controlled the Conference may bow before the gusts of popular opinion, but they will never lead us out of our troubles.

He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty - just
as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz.

The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author's assault upon them is to be successful, — a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression. The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

"saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth

The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists.

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism — which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object.

It is, however, generally supposed that if the whole of a man's surplus production is taken from him, his efficiency and his industry are diminished, The entrepreneur and the inventor will not contrive, the trader and the shopkeeper will not save, the laborer will not toil, if the fruits of their industry are set aside, not for the benefit of their children, their old age, their pride, or their position, but for the enjoyment of a foreign conqueror.

Practical man, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the sleeves of some defunct economist

If A was in love with B and believed that B reciprocated his feelings, whereas in fact B did not, but was in love with C, the state of affairs was certainly not so good as it would have been if A had been right, but was it worse or better than it would have become if A discovered his mistake? If A was in love with B under a misapprehension as to B’s qualities, was this better or worse than A’s not being in love at all? If A was in love with B because A’s spectacles were not strong enough to see B’s complexion, did this altogether, or partly, destroy the value of A’s state of mind?