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When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

John Maynard Keynes

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

Design Dream Future Prosper Trust
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
Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Convention Failure Teaching Wisdom World
Chess is a cure for headaches.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Chess Game Head Pain
All production is for the purpose of ultimately satisfying a consumer.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Consumer Purpose Satisfaction
The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn’t deliver the goods.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Capital Deliver Goodness International Success Virtue War
For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Believe Income Justification Social Wealth
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
The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Better Government Important Individual Present Worst
Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Fade Market Yourself
The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Course Exhaust Focus Run
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
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Deep Difficult Effort Escape Ideas Inspirational Lying Old
The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Acceptance Big Forget Ideas Old People Problem
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
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
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
The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Animal Market Move Reason Spirit
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 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
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
Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Conservatism Ideal Satisfaction
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
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

History Mindset Opinion Study
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
I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Crime End Government Myself Work

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

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When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

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