John Maynard Keynes Quotes

In the long run, we are all dead.

Ideas shape the course of history.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

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

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

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

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

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.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipation of others.

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

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

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

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

The best thing about Keynesian economics is that you can be broke and it’s not your fault.

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

The power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

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

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.

The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.

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

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

Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.

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

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

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.

It is safe to say that power is the reason most people go into economics.

The spectacle of modern investment markets has sometimes moved me towards the conclusion that to make the purchase of an investment permanent and indissoluble, like marriage, except by reason of death or other grave cause, might be a useful remedy for our contemporary evils.

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

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

I do not think it can be disputed that the great fault of our nineteenth century speculation (which was in other respects so remarkably successful) was the almost total neglect of that intricate connexion between waves of optimism and waves of self-fulfilling pessimism which are natural, possibly inevitable, in a capitalist society.

It is the marking of a stage in the process of a nation’s growth when it admits another nation’s products to the free list without requiring reciprocal treatment.

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

It is not right that there triggers two weeks longer than a minute.

The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

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

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

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

Ideas shape the course of history.

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

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

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

Economic models are always wrong, but some are useful.

The supreme principle of scientific thinking is to set aside prejudices.

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