Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
The Economic Consequences of the Peace has a claim to be regarded as Keynes's best book. In none of his others did he succeed so well in bringing all… - Robert Skidelsky
" "The Economic Consequences of the Peace has a claim to be regarded as Keynes's best book. In none of his others did he succeed so well in bringing all his gifts to bear on the subject in hand. Although the heart of the book was a lucid account of the reparation problem, the book was no mere technical treatise. The torrid mise-en-scène at Paris is vividly recreated; the failings of Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George are displayed with cruel precision. The writing is angry, scornful and, rarely for Keynes, passionate: never again were his denunciations of bungling and lying, or his moral indignation, to ring so loud and clear. Giving shape to the whole is a brooding sense of menace; a sense of the impending downfall of a civilisation; of the mindless mob waiting to usurp the collapsing inheritance; of the futility and frivolity of statesmanship. The result is a personal statement unique in twentieth-century literature. Keynes was staking the claim of the economist to be Prince. All other forms of rule were bankrupt. The economist's vision of welfare, conjoined to a new standard of technical excellence, were the last barriers to chaos, madness and retrogression.
English
Collect this quote
About Robert Skidelsky
Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky, FBA (born 25 April 1939), is a British economic historian.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky
•
Professor Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
•
Baron Skidelsky
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Robert Skidelsky
The reason why economics has given such a poor account of the origins of the crisis is that there is something essentially incompatible between the economist's view of individual rationality and systemic collapse. Without adding qualifications which strain their logic, economists cannot readily get from their picture of the the individual maximizing his utilities to booms and slumps and the persistence of depressions.
Keynes was one of those rare persons who can both think and act at the highest level. His life falls into cycles or phases, in which the emphasis shifts from one to the other. These shifts were related to what was happening in the world. At some times, particularly during the two world wars, there was a greater demand for Keynes's practical genius, and a greater satisfaction to be had from exercising it. But the cycles can also be seen in terms of action and reaction. Periods of great intellectual effort demand their release in practical activity, while practical activity prompts, sooner or later, a yearning for the cloister. Before 1914, Keynes's desire for the cloister was uppermost, partly because he was at this period most under the immediate influence of Moore's philosophy, partly because the nature of his sexual relations fitted private life better than public life ― a point of considerable importance even today, but more so then, when homosexual acts were illegal, and the danger of blackmail much greater.
Loading...