There were many Moliére characters speaking Keynesian prose in the depression years before 1936. What Keynes’s General Theory gave us, which Ohlin’s … - Paul Samuelson

I will not waste ink on face-saving tautologies. When the governess of infants caught in a burning building reenters it unobserved in a hopeless mission of rescue, casuists may argue; "She did it only to get the good feeling of doing it. Because otherwise she wouldn't have done it." Such argumentation (in Wolfgang Pauli's scathing phrase) is not even wrong. It is just boring, irrelevant, and in the technical sense of old-fashioned logical positivism "meaningless."

The General Theory caught most economists under the age of 35 with the unexpected virulence of a disease first attacking and decimating an isolated tribe of south sea islanders. Economists beyond 50 turned out to be quite immune to the ailment. With time, most economists in between began to run the fever, often without knowing or admitting their condition.

Modigliani's theory was a powerful searchlight on what was happening... It is the best explanation of what has actually been happening in the great swing of American life since the 1950's.