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

John Maynard Keynes

When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Compromise Expectation Final Position Result
There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Currency Existence Subtle Sure
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Gold History International Method Standard
Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Believe Economy Intellectual Man Myself Practice Quite Slave
Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Case Decision Reality Reason
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Future Importance Money Present
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Business Contribute Himself Man Society Tolerance
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.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Bury Enterprise Principle Private Treasure
I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Crime End Government Myself Work
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
Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Advance Experience Provision
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
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
Canada is a place of infinite promise. We like the people, and if one ever had to emigrate, this would be the destination, not the U.S.A. The hills, lakes and forests make it a place of peace and repose of the mind, such as one never finds in the U.S.A.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Destination Infinite Nature Peace Place Promise
Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Conservatism Ideal Satisfaction
I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Bank Known Myself People Understand University

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

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

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