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It is a good thing to make mistakes so long as you’re found out quickly.

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

Accident Achievement Economist Immortal Writing
Ideas shape the course of history.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Course History Ideas Shape
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Character Habitat Kind Man Power Surround
If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Calculation Human Nature Result Temptation
Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Beginning Doubt Fast Spread
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Fair God Oneself Pretend Soul
The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Animal Market Move Reason Spirit
Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Act Dangerous Feeling Hell Thinking Wrong
It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Believe Economics Fools Temporary
The considerations upon which expectations of prospective yields are based are partly existing facts which we can assume to be known more or less for certain, and partly future events which can only be forecasted with more or less confidence.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Confidence Existence Expectation Forecast Known Prediction
I’d rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Choice Myself Right Wrong
There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Disaster Investment Rational World
Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Agreement Move Philosophy Virtual
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

Bank Manager Mercy Rich Yourself
In the long run we are all dead.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Death Philosophy Wasted Time
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

It is a good thing to make mistakes so long as you’re found out quickly.

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It is a good thing to make mistakes so long as you’re found out quickly.

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