Quotes from John Maynard Keynes

Of the maxims of orthodox finance, none, surely, is more antisocial than the fetish of liquidity…. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.

Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of opinion—how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.

If enterprise is afoot, wealth accumulates, whatever may be happening to thrift; and if enterprise is asleep, wealth decays, whatever thrift may be doing.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

He [Clemenceau] had one illusion—France; and one disillusion—mankind, including Frenchmen.

The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life—will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

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

He [Woodrow Wilson] could write Notes from Sinai or Olympus; he could remain unapproachable in the White House or even in the Council of Ten and be safe. But if he once stepped down to the intimate equality of the Four, the game was evidently up.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

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.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be...

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

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.

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.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

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

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.