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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

The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Course Exhaust Focus Run
The duty of “saving” became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Growth Object Religion Save True Virtue
I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Crime End Government Myself Work
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

Build Increase War Wealth
All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists .
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Ideas Origin Party Politics
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

Affair Current Death Guide Ocean Past Run Storm
Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant’s profit, we have begun to change our civilization.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Allow Beginning Change Civilization Disobedient Profit
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

Capitalism Economy Extreme Manage Object Thinking Wisdom
The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Drive Profit Thrift
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

Believe Economics Problem Revolution Thinking World Writing
Never in history was there a method devised of such efficacy for setting each country’s advantage at variance with its neighbours’ as the international gold (or, formerly, silver) standard.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Gold History International Method Standard
The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available,with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation in the United States.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Government Introduction Speculation Transaction
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Better Choice Right Wrong
The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Acceptance Big Forget Ideas Old People Problem
There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Capital Reason Scarcity
I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Ideas Interest Myself Power

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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