John Maynard Keynes quotes - page 5

For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us! (John Maynard Keynes)
The next move is with the head, and fists must wait. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Inflation is unjust and Deflation is inexpedient. Of the two perhaps Deflation is, if we rule out exaggerated inflations such as that of Germany, the worse; because it is worse, in an impoverished world, to provoke unemployment than to disappoint the rentier. But it is not necessary that we should weigh one evil against the other. It is easier to agree that both are evils to be shunned. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Communism draws its strength from deeper, more serious sources. Offered to us as a means of improving the economic situation, it is an insult to our intelligence. But offered as a means of making the economic situation worse, that is its subtle, its almost irresistible, attraction. Communism is not a reaction against the failure of the nineteenth century to organize optimal economic output. It is a reaction against its comparative success. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Shaw and Stalin are still satisfied with Marx's picture of the capitalist world... They look backwards to what capitalism was, not forward to what it is becoming. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
My only regret is that I have not drunk more champagne in my life. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Being an optimist, I am still hopeful that it may end in the division of Spain geographically into two states. But, above all, I want the war to come to an end and not to extend. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
If one is born a political animal, it is most uncomfortable not to belong to a political party; cold and lonely and futile it is. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Anything we can actually do we can afford. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Why should coal miners suffer a lower standard of life than other classes of labour? They may be lazy, good-for-nothing fellows who do not work so hard or so long as they should. But is there any evidence that they are more lazy or more good-for-nothing than other people? On grounds of social justice, no case can be made out for reducing. the wages of the miners. They are the victims of the economic Juggernaut. They represent in the flesh the "fundamental adjustments" engineered by the Treasury and the Bank of England to satisfy the impatience of the City fathers to bridge the "moderate gap" between $4.40 and $4.86. They (and others to follow) are the "moderate sacrifice" still necessary to ensure the stability of the gold standard. The plight of the coal miners is the first, but not-unless we are very lucky-the last, of the Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill. (John Maynard Keynes)
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
He was the nicest, and the only talented person I saw in all Berlin, except perhaps old Fuerstenberg ... and Kurt Singer. And he was a Jew; and so was Fuerstenberg. And my dear Melchior is a Jew too. Yet if I lived there, I felt I might turn anti-Semite. For the poor Prussian is too slow and heavy on his legs for the other kind of Jews, the ones who are not imps but serving devils, with small horns, pitch forks, and oily tails. It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who have all the money and the power and brains. I vote rather for the plump hausfraus and thick fingered Wandering Birds. But I am not sure that I wouldn't even rather be mixed up with Lloyd George than with the German political Jews. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's bluff in that party. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
The central principle of investment is to go contrary to the general opinion, on the grounds that if everyone agreed about its merits, the investment is inevitably too dear and therefore unattractive. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
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? View quote
John Maynard Keynes
In this autumn of 1919, in which I write, we are at the dead season of our fortunes. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
This is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. For the resources of nature and men's devices are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. (John Maynard Keynes)
When the facts change, I change my mind. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
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. View quote
John Maynard Keynes
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that he nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all. View quote
John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes

Occupation: English Economist
Born: June 5, 1883
Died: April 21, 1946
Quotes count: 167
Wikipedia: John Maynard Keynes

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