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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.

John Maynard Keynes

There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Disaster Investment Rational World
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
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
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
Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information?
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Information Myself Position Thinking Yourself
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
In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Gold Standard Truth
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Different Education Incompetent
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
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Better Choice Right Wrong
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Character Habitat Kind Man Power Surround
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
I’d rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Choice Myself Right Wrong
Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel – these are things which should in their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible and above all let finance be primarily national.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Art Finance Hospitality Ideas International Knowledge National Possible
The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Error Excessive Ideas National Power
The division of the spoils between the victors will also provide employment for a powerful office, whose doorsteps the greedy adventurers and jealous concession hunters of twenty or thirty nations will crowd and defile.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Crowd Division Employment Nation Provide Spoil
The atomic hypothesis which had worked so splendidly in Physics breaks down in Psychics.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Break Physics Splendid Work
By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Citizenship Important Inflation Process Secret
Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Forecast Investment Marketing Prediction Speculation
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
I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Ideas Interest Myself Power
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

Difficult Escape Ideas Lying Mindset Ourselves
The expected never happens; it is the unexpected always.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Expectation Inspirational Miracle Motivational
Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Difficult Expectation Investment Scarce
It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Foolish Greatness Possible Progress
It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Attachment Certain Expectation Fools
The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Benefit Capital Division Greatness Kind Man Society War Wealth

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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