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

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.

Never in history was there a method devised of such efficacy for setting each country’s advantage at variance with its neighbours’ as the international gold (or, formerly, silver) standard.

Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant’s profit, we have begun to change our civilization.

I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely objectionable.

One blames politicians, not for inconsistency but for obstinacy. They are the interpreters, not the masters, of our fate. It is their job, in fact, to register the fact accomplished.

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.

The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.

Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

It is investment, i.e. the increased production of material wealth in the shape of capital goods, which alone increases national wealth.

Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

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.

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.