John Maynard Keynes Quotes

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

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future .

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the facts change, I change my mind

Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information?

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

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

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

I'd rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.

I wish I'd drunk more champagne.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth.

The principle objectives in life are love, the creation and enjoyment if aesthetic experience, the pursuit of knowledge. Love comes a long way first.

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

Chess is a cure for headaches.

I am myself impressed by the great social advantages of increasing the stock of capital until it ceases to be scarce.

When I find new information I change my mind; What do you do?

It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.

Perhaps a day might come when there would be at last be enough to go round, and when posterity could enter into the enjoyment of our labors.

Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.

All production is for the purpose of ultimately satisfying a consumer.

Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.

The insane and irrational springs of wickedness in most men ...

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

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

We will not have any more crashes in our time.

Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.

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

Men will not always die quietly.

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

In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.

If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp.

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

Obstinacy can bring only a penalty and no reward.

When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.

The atomic hypothesis which had worked so splendidly in Physics breaks down in Psychics.

The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

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

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

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

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.

Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant's profit, we have begun to change our civilization.

The expected never happens; it is the unexpected always.

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

Economics is a very dangerous science.

To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.

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

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

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

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

Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.

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

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

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

I should have drunk more Champagne.

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

With the breakdown of money economy the practice of international barter is becoming prevalent.

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

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

It's not bringing in the new ideas that's so hard; it's getting rid of the old ones.

The idea behind stamped money is sound.

Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case

The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.

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

The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.

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

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

Logic , like lyrical poetry , is no employment for the middle-aged

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

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

Newton was a judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides

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

It is investment, i.e. the increased production of material wealth in the shape of capital goods, which alone increases national wealth.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

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

There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world.

There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.

The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.

All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists .

[People] will do the rational thing, but only after exploring all other alternatives.

A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.

But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital.

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

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

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

Saving became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth

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

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

It is the duty of the long-term investor to endure great losses with equanimity.

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

Economic privation proceeds by easy stages, and so long as men suffer it patiently the outside world cares little.