The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNESIt has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability.
More John Maynard Keynes Quotes
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I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize – not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years – the way the world thinks about economic problems.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
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 -
If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
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 -
Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The duty of “saving” became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The principle objectives in life are love, the creation and enjoyment if aesthetic experience, the pursuit of knowledge. Love comes a long way first.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The treasury could fill old bottles with banknotes and bury them, and leave it to private enterprises on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The expected never happens; it is the unexpected always.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
It is the long-term investor, who will in practice come in for the most criticism… For it is the essence of his behavior that he should be eccentric, unconventional, and rash in the eyes of average opinion.
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 -
Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
It economics is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.
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 -
It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES -
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
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