Robert Skidelsky quotes

A work of genius is a complex object and there is light to be shed about what went into the making of it. Even in the case of scientific and mathematical achievement we can say a great deal about the existing state of knowledge, the problems it failed to address, why those problems were or had become interesting, the particular capacities which the solver brought to their solution. At the other extreme is a work of art which seems to have much more immediate roots in the personal life of the artist or writer. In between is the area in which Keynes worked, which was partly scientific, partly artistic. This gives a wide justification for a biographical approach. As I put it in the introduction to my first volume: 'If underlying Keynesian theory was Keynes's vision of his age, knowledge of his state of mind and the circumstances which formed it is essential, not only in order to understand how he came to see the world as he did, but also in order to pass judgement on the theory itself. (Robert Skidelsky)
Through Marshall's life and work the Victorian demand for authoritative social doctrine found one of its most important expressions in the Cambridge School of Economics. Maynard Keynes's relationship to that tradition is one of the central themes of this biography. That relationship was never unproblematic, because Marshall's achievement was incomplete. He had shown how the existing moral code could be made to serve society rather than God. But there was nothing in his work to show how it could be altered so as to make it possible for individuals to lead happier or more civilised lives. Marshall himself seems not to have felt any pressure to do so. But Sidgwick had, as had many other thinking Victorians. It was the reorganisation of personal life rather than the reorganisation of society which seemed the urgent problem for the next generation, especially once the soc ail and economic clouds of the 1880s and 1890s had given way to the bright sunlight of the Edwardian age. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
Maynard Keynes was born into a certain civilisation at a particular moment of history, and was one of its foremost products. He inherited both its aspirations and its tensions. He grew up in the shadow of its great figures, notably Henry Sidgwick and Alfred Marshall, the teachers and colleagues of is father. His style of thought and way of life both bear Cambridge's unmistakable imprint. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
Keynes's idea was very simple. Monetary and fiscal policy should have a single goal, jointly pursued, of maintaining a full employment level aggregate demand. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
What started Keynes on the road to the Keynesian Revolution was the incomplete British recovery from the depression of 1920 to 1922. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
Keynes's economic philosophy is thus made up of three interdependent parts: his technical macroeconomics, his embattled political philosophy and his ultimate ethical purpose. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
Born in 1883 and dying in 1946, the bulk of Keynes's professional life was framed by two world wars. At the beginning, he was an Edwardian optimist, convinced that automatic progress was steadily enlarging opportunities for more and more people to live the 'good life', as identified by his mentor, G. E. Moore, and his friends of the Bloomsbury Group. He ended his life bequeathing the world a theory, policies and two international institutions (the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) designed to strengthen the foundations of free economy, so as to make it possible again for people to indulge the hopes with which he had grown up. In between, there was catastrophe and retrogression, starting in Europe and spreading to most of the rest of the world. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
Keynes is not just for the foxhole, but for the emerging world order. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
In ethics Keynes was a Platonist, in politics he was an Aristotelian. His ethics pointed him towards the ideal; his politics towards moderation. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
To understand the crisis we need to get beyond the blame game. For at the root of the crisis was not failures of character or competence, but a failure of ideas. View quote
Robert Skidelsky
All epoch-defining events are the result of conjunctures - the correlation of normally unconnected happenings which jolts humanity out of its existing rut and sets it on a new course. (Robert Skidelsky)
Keynes was an applied economist who turned to inventing theory because the theory he had inherited could not properly explain what was happening. View quote
Robert Skidelsky