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It is Enterprise which build and improves the world’s possessions. If Enterprise is afoot, Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, Wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.

John Maynard Keynes

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Envelope Future Ignorance Object Ourselves Skills Social
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Different Education Incompetent
To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Action Discussion Origin Public Social
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
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
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Future Importance Money Present
Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Beginning Doubt Fast Spread
Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Fade Market Yourself
Obstinacy can bring only a penalty and no reward.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Obstinate Penalty Reward
There is no harm in being sometimes wrong – especially if one is promptly found out.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Finding Harm Oneself Wrong
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
The expected never happens; it is the unexpected always.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Expectation Inspirational Miracle Motivational
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
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
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
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
The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Economics Gift Order Special Study
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 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
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
The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Character Habitat Kind Man Power Surround
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
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 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
The Economic Problem, the problem of want and poverty and the economic struggle between classes and nations, is nothing but a frightful muddle, a transitory and unnecessary muddle.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Economics Nation Necessary Poverty Problem Struggle

It is Enterprise which build and improves the world’s possessions. If Enterprise is afoot, Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, Wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.

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It is Enterprise which build and improves the world’s possessions. If Enterprise is afoot, Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, Wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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