“Ideas shape the course of history.”

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

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.

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.

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

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.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.

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.

For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth.

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.

The duty of “saving” became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.

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.

In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.

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.

It is the duty of the long-term investor to endure great losses with equanimity.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Gold is a relic from a time when government’s were less trustworthy in these matters (currency debasement) than they are now.