By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNESIf 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.
More John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol – a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in heart and cheerful of spirit.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth.
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis , and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Economics is a very dangerous science.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The division of the spoils between the victors will also provide employment for a powerful office, whose doorsteps the greedy adventurers and jealous concession hunters of twenty or thirty nations will crowd and defile.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The Economic Problem, the problem of want and poverty and the economic struggle between classes and nations, is nothing but a frightful muddle, a transitory and unnecessary muddle.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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?
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The numeric system was invented to help man to put order in the chaos of the world.
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?
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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 accomplished.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES