John Maynard Keynes Quotations

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

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

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

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.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

In the long run we are all dead.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.

If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong- especially if one is promptly found out.

Regarded as a means, (the businessman) is tolerable; as an end, he is not so satisfactory

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.

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.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

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.

The Class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.

I feel no shame at being found still owning a share when the bottom of the market comes…I would go much further than that. I should say that it is from time to time the duty of a serious investor to accept the depreciation of his holdings with equanimity and without reproaching himself. … An investor…should be aiming primarily at long-period results, and should be solely judged by these.

It is a mistake to think that one limits one’s risk by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence.

Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.

Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.

Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught

The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available,with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation in the United States.

If you owe your banker a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe your banker a million pounds, he is at your mercy.

The old saying holds. Owe your banker �1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him �1 million and the position is reversed.

The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.

It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.

I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize - not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years - the way the world thinks about economic problems.

The power to become habituated to his surroundings and therefore to no longer be grateful for what is good in it is a marked characteristic of mankind and needs to be fought against if a person is to be happy.

The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth -- he could at the same time and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprise of any quarter of the world -- he could secure forthwith, if he wished, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality.

If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.

It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges.

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.

The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, — but generally to be obtained at your neighbor's expense.

Economics is a very dangerous science.

Galton's eccentric, sceptical, observing, flashing, cavalry-leader type of mind led him eventually to become the founder of the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists, namely eugenics.

The numeric system was invented to help man to put order in the chaos of the world.

I am trying to re-shape and improve my central position.

Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.

The love of money as a possession...will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity.

What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man was that age which came to an end in August 1914.

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. 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. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability.

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.

I wish I'd drunk more champagne.

One blames politicians, not for inconsistency but for obstinacy. They are the interpreters, not the masters, of our fate. It is their job, in fact, to register the fact accompli.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.

But my lord, when we addressed this issue a few years ago, didn't you argue the other side?" He said, "That's true, but when I get more evidence I sometimes change my mind. What do you do?

The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit.

[T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.

I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely objectionable.

The treasury could fill old bottles with banknotes and bury them..and leave it to private enterprises on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again.

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.

I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organizing investments.

Gold is a relic from a time when government's were less trustworthy in these matters (currency debasement) than they are now.

Men will not always die quietly.

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.

He had one illusion - France; and one disillusion - mankind, including Frenchmen.

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.

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.

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens.

As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method of investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes.

Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.

The friends of gold will have to be extremely wise and moderate if they are to avoid a revolution.

How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?

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.

Like all his type, Newton was wholly aloof from women.

By this means (fractional reserve banking) government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.

I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.

The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably.

In this autumn of 1919, in which I write, we are at the dead season of our fortunes.

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.

I do not mean to impugn the social justice and social expediency of the redistribution of incomes aimed at by N.I.R.A. and by the various schemes for agricultural restriction. The latter, in particular, I should strongly support in principle. But too much emphasis on the remedial value of a higher price-level as an object in itself may lead to serious misapprehension as to the part which prices can play in the technique of recovery. The stimulation of output by increasing aggregate purchasing power is the right way to get prices up; and not the other way round.

To suppose that safety-first consists in having a small gamble in a large number of different companies where I have no information to reach a good judgment, as compared with a substantial stake in a company where one's information is adequate, strikes me as a travesty of investment policy.

One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence.

The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.

I don't feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens.

The considerations upon which expectations of prospective yields are based are partly existing facts which we can assume to be known more or less for certain, and partly future events which can only be forecasted with more or less confidence.

...By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract,... governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the nineteenth century.

Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.

I can't remember my telephone number, but I know it was in the high numbers.

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.