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Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

John Maynard Keynes

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’s not bringing in the new ideas that’s so hard; it’s getting rid of the old ones.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Hard Ideas Old Oneself
Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Day Save Work Yourself
Perhaps a day might come when there would be at last be enough to go round, and when posterity could enter into the enjoyment of our labors.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Enjoyment Enough Labor Poster Round
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
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
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Behavior Creation Economics Head Heart Problem Religion
Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Difficult Expectation Investment Scarce
The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Economics Gift Order Special Study
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

Experience Knowledge Life Love Objective Principle
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Average Believe Discover Interest Opinion
The atomic hypothesis which had worked so splendidly in Physics breaks down in Psychics.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Break Physics Splendid Work
If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Bank Problem Wealth Yourself
Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Argument Balance Budget Defeat Fruit Object Strange
The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Cycle Finding Permanent Remedy Right Trade
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
When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Change Mindset Myself Persuade Wrong
Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Case Decision Reality Reason
Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Description Government Machine Oneself Work
A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Avoid Bank Blame Dangerous Himself Ruin Sound
All production is for the purpose of ultimately satisfying a consumer.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Consumer Purpose Satisfaction
The expected never happens; it is the unexpected always.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Expectation Inspirational Miracle Motivational
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
But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future .
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Design Dream Future Prosper Trust
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

Essence Investor Opinion Practice Willing
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
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

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

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Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

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