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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

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Easy Economist Ideas Politics Rule World
I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Conservatism Known Man Myself Past Present
The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Course Exhaust Focus Run
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Belief Benefit Capital Man Nasty Reason Work
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Difficult Escape Ideas Lying Mindset Ourselves
If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Change Farm Raining Season Stock Summer
There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Disaster Investment Rational World
Gold is a relic from a time when government’s were less trustworthy in these matters (currency debasement) than they are now.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Currency Gold Government Time Trust
It 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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Direct Knowledge Point Probability True
It is investment, i.e. the increased production of material wealth in the shape of capital goods, which alone increases national wealth.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Capital Investment National Production Wealth
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
A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Aware Himself Investor Risk Run
I am myself impressed by the great social advantages of increasing the stock of capital until it ceases to be scarce.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Advantage Greatness Impression Scarce Social Stock
The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, – but generally to be obtained at your neighbor’s expense.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Desire Glory Love Nation Yourself
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Economy Kind Liberty Man Politics Problem Society
I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx .
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Believe Future Learning Myself

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.

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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.

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