John Maynard Keynes Quotes

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

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

- John Maynard Keynes

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

- John Maynard Keynes

Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated.

- John Maynard Keynes

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

- John Maynard Keynes

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

- John Maynard Keynes

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

- John Maynard Keynes

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

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

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

- John Maynard Keynes

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

- John Maynard Keynes

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

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

- 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

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.

- John Maynard Keynes

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

- John Maynard Keynes

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

- John Maynard Keynes

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

- John Maynard Keynes

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.

- John Maynard Keynes

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

- John Maynard Keynes

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

- John Maynard Keynes

I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

- John Maynard Keynes

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

- John Maynard Keynes

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

- John Maynard Keynes

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

- John Maynard Keynes

Ideas shape the course of history.

- John Maynard Keynes

In the long run we are all dead.

- John Maynard Keynes