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The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, – but generally to be obtained at your neighbor’s expense.

John Maynard Keynes

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
A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Aware Himself Investor Risk Run
All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists .
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Ideas Origin Party Politics
Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Advance Experience Provision
I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Conservatism Known Man Myself Past Present
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
If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Act Consistent Optimism Realize
If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Calculation Human Nature Result Temptation
The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Cycle Finding Permanent Remedy Right Trade
But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future .
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Design Dream Future Prosper Trust
What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914!
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Age Episode Man Progress
The friends of gold will have to be extremely wise and moderate if they are to avoid a revolution.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Avoid Friendship Gold Revolution Wisdom
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
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
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
Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Government Hide Mistake Money
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
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
$John Maynard Keynes Quote - By this means (fractional reserve banking) government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.$

By this means (fractional reserve banking) government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Detection Man Mistake Reserve 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
Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Argument Balance Budget Defeat Fruit Object Strange
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
The key to selecting the winner isn’t choosing the face you think is the most beautiful but rather the face other people will pick
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Face People Selection Thinking Winner
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
Economics is a very dangerous science.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Dangerous Economics Science
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
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Criticism Foundation Inadequate Weight
Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Hands History Save Society True

The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, – but generally to be obtained at your neighbor’s expense.

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The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, – but generally to be obtained at your neighbor’s expense.

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Popular Authors

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