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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

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Activity Country Development Job
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
How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Difficult Necessary Pay Performance Service
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
The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity-preference was the outstanding evil, the prime impediment to the growth of wealth, in the ancient and medieval worlds.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Destruction Growth Investment Liquid World
Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Case Decision Reality Reason
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
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Belief Capital Goodness Greatness Man Wicket
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
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Different Education Incompetent
I was suffering from my chronic delusion that one good share is safer than ten bad ones, and I am always forgetting that hardly anyone else shares this particular delusion.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Delusion Forget Goodness Suffering
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Better Choice Right Wrong
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 numeric system was invented to help man to put order in the chaos of the world.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Chaos Help Invention Man System World
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 better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Balance Bank Better Citizenship Man

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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