John Maynard Quotes & Sayings

Economic privation proceeds by easy stages, and so long as men suffer it patiently the outside world cares little. — John Maynard Keynes

There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world. — John Maynard Keynes

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

The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry. — John Maynard Keynes

He had one illusion - France; and one disillusion - mankind, including Frenchmen. — John Maynard Keynes

In my opinion it is a grand book ... Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement ... What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them. Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States. — John Maynard Keynes

Businessmen have a different set of delusions from politicians; and need, therefore, different handling. They are, however, much milder than politicians, at the same time allured and terrified by the glare of publicity ... You could do anything you like with them, if you would treat them (even the big ones) not as wolves and tigers, but as domestic animals by nature, even though they have been badly brought up and not trained as you would wish. — John Maynard Keynes

For centuries, economic thinkers, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes, have tried to identify the elusive formula that makes some countries more prosperous and successful than others. My curiosity about this topic spurred me, as a young professor of economics in the late 1970s, to research new ways of measuring national competitiveness. — Klaus Schwab

As an evolutionary biologist, I have learned over the years that most people do not want to see themselves as lumbering robots programmed to ensure the survival of their genes. I don't think they will want to see themselves as digital computers either. To be told by someone with impeccable scientific credentials that they are nothing of the kind can only be pleasing. — John Maynard Smith

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. — John Maynard Keynes

The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts ... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician. — John Maynard Keynes

How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult? — John Maynard Keynes

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

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent. — John Maynard Keynes

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. — John Maynard Keynes

It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary. Moreover, the necessary measures of socialization can be introduced gradually and without a break in the general traditions of society. — John Maynard Keynes

I do not mean to impugn the social justice and social expediency of the redistribution of incomes aimed at by N.I.R.A. and by the various schemes for agricultural restriction. The latter, in particular, I should strongly support in principle. But too much emphasis on the remedial value of a higher price-level as an object in itself may lead to serious misapprehension as to the part which prices can play in the technique of recovery. The stimulation of output by increasing aggregate purchasing power is the right way to get prices up; and not the other way round. — John Maynard Keynes

One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence. — John Maynard Keynes

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

I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx . — John Maynard Keynes

It's not bringing in the new ideas that's so hard; it's getting rid of the old ones. — John Maynard Keynes

Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled. — John Maynard Smith

The love of money as a possession ... will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity. — John Maynard Keynes

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally. — John Maynard Keynes

The spectacle of modern investment markets has sometimes moved me towards the conclusion that to make the purchase of an investment permanent and indissoluble, like marriage, except by reason of death or other grave cause, might be a useful remedy for our contemporary evils. For this would force the investor to direct his mind to the long-term prospects and to those only. — John Maynard Keynes

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir? — John Maynard Keynes

I think we invent jargon because it saves times talking to one-another. — John Maynard Smith

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

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

Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed. — John Maynard Keynes

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

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

I can't go around believing in a God that believes suffering is good for me. — John Maynard Smith

But if America recalls for a moment what Europe has meant to her and still means to her, what Europe, the mother of art and of knowledge, in spite of everything, still is and still will be, will she not reject these counsels of indifference and isolation, and interest herself in what may prove decisive issues for the progress and civilization of all mankind? — John Maynard Keynes

The expected never happens; it is the unexpected always. — John Maynard Keynes

If I am right in supposing it to be comparatively easy to make capital-goods so abundant that the marginal efficiency of capital is zero, this may be the most sensible way of gradually getting rid of many of the objectionable features of capitalism. — John Maynard Keynes

Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day. — John Maynard Keynes

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all. — John Maynard Keynes

Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that teach competitor has to pick not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgement are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees. — John Maynard Keynes

The evolution of sex is the hardest problem in evolutionary biology. — John Maynard Smith

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

In living organisms, nucleic acid molecules are the only indefinite hereditary replicators, or at least they were until the invention of language and music. — John Maynard Smith

The division of the spoils between the victors will also provide employment for a powerful office, whose doorsteps the greedy adventurers and jealous concession hunters of twenty or thirty nations will crowd and defile. — John Maynard Keynes

So far, we have been able to study only one evolving system and we cannot wait for interstellar flight to provide us with a second. If we want to discover generalizations about evolving systems, we will have to look at artificial ones. — John Maynard Smith

You couldn't have human society without language. — John Maynard Smith

Genetics is about how information is stored and transmitted between generations. — John Maynard Smith

The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare. — Ben Bernanke

But my lord, when we addressed this issue a few years ago, didn't you argue the other side?" He said, "That's true, but when I get more evidence I sometimes change my mind. What do you do? — John Maynard Keynes

To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol - a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in
heart and cheerful of spirit. — John Maynard Keynes

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. — John Maynard Keynes

Like all his type, Newton was wholly aloof from women. — John Maynard Keynes

Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated. — John Maynard Keynes

Though their bodies lie cold and dormant, the grave cannot contain the influence these seven men have had on today's world. They generated philosophies that have been ardently grasped by masses of people but are erroneous and antiscriptural. As we continue to unknowingly subscribe to their philosophies we keep the grave open for: Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Julius Wellhausen, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keyes, Soren Kierkegaard. — David Breese

Of the maxims of orthodox finance none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine of that it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions to concentrate their resources upon the holding of 'liquid' securities. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole. — John Maynard Keynes

When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position. — John Maynard Keynes

I can't remember my telephone number, but I know it was in the high numbers. — John Maynard Keynes

Those, who are strongly wedded to what I shall call 'the classical theory', will fluctuate, I expect, between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to determine if either of these or the third alternative is right. — John Maynard Keynes

When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind. — John Maynard Keynes

Friedrich Hayek, who died on March 23, 1992 at age 92, was arguably the greatest social scientist of the twentieth century. By the time of his death, his fundamental way of thought had supplanted the system of John Maynard Keynes - his chief intellectual rival of the century - in the battle since the 1930s for the minds of economists and the policies of governments. — Julian Simon

Thus, after all, the actual rates of aggregate saving and spending do not depend on Precaution, Foresight, Calculation, Improvement, Independence, Enterprise, Pride or Avarice. Virtue and vice play no part. It all depends on how far the rate of interest is favourable to investment, after taking account of the marginal efficiency of capital. No, this is an overstatement. If the rate of interest were so governed as to maintain continuous full employment, virtue would resume her sway;
the rate of capital accumulation would depend on the weakness of the propensity to consume. Thus, once again, the tribute that classical economists pay to her is due to their concealed assumption that the rate of interest always is so governed. — John Maynard Keynes

In continental Europe,' wrote a distraught John Maynard Keynes, shortly after storming out of the British delegation at Versailles, 'the earth heaves and no one but is aware of the rumblings. There it is not just a matter of extravagance or "labour troubles"; but of life and death, of starvation and existence, and of the fearful convulsions of a dying civilization.'24 — Paul Mason

The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members. — John Maynard Keynes

It is preferable to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur, and his assistants, as the sole factor of production, operating in a given environment of technique, natural resources, capital equipment and effective demand. This is why we have been able to take labour as the sole physical unit which we require in our economic system, apart from units of money and of time. — John Maynard Keynes

I find economics increasingly satisfactory, and I think I am rather good at it. I want to manage a railroad or organise a Trust or at least swindle the investing public — John Maynard Keynes

The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth
he could at the same time and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprise of any quarter of the world
he could secure forthwith, if he wished, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality. — John Maynard Keynes

By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract, ... governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the nineteenth century. — John Maynard Keynes

Nothing can preserve the integrity of contact between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the state to revise what has become intolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are too great. If the accretions of vested interests were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half. — John Maynard Keynes

I wish I'd drunk more champagne. — John Maynard Keynes

Logic , like lyrical poetry , is no employment for the middle-aged — John Maynard Keynes

As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method of investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes. — John Maynard Keynes

So it is not an accident that the Nazi lads vent a particular fury against (Einstein). He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast intellectualist, individualist, supernationalist, pacifist, inky, plump ... How should they know the glory of the free-ranging intellect and soft objective sympathy to whom money and violence, drink and blood and pomp, mean absolutely nothing? — John Maynard Keynes

The Class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie. — John Maynard Keynes

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe. — John Maynard Smith

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. — John Maynard Keynes

I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize - not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years - the way the world thinks about economic problems. — John Maynard Keynes

I don't think that much change comes from economists. I think it comes more from political realities. Probably the two giants of the 20th century, who actually did shift government policy in the U.S. and around the world, were John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. I don't see anybody in our system who is at that level of influence. — Adam Davidson

God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train. — John Maynard Keynes

In the long run, we are all dead! — John Maynard Keynes

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

The numeric system was invented to help man to put order in the chaos of the world. — John Maynard Keynes

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

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was 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. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. — John Maynard Keynes

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

The principle objectives in life are love, the creation and enjoyment if aesthetic experience, the pursuit of knowledge. Love comes a long way first. — John Maynard Keynes

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

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

But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital. — John Maynard Keynes

When the facts change, I change my mind — John Maynard Keynes

Jowell fell back on the same justification for funding the arts that the first chairman of the Arts Council, John Maynard Keynes, had deployed in 1945. Art was something produced by people with special skills, who set their own standards of excellence; they needed to be supported to do this, and the audience needed to be encouraged to appreciate this excellence, by being given subsidised access to it. And for all of Jowell's attempts to transcend instrumentalism, the purpose of culture continued to be to help the government 'to transform our society into a place of justice, talent and ambition where individuals can fulfil their true potential'.22 — Robert Hewison

Nevertheless, if we contemplate a society with a somewhat stable wage-unit, with national characteristics which determine the propensity to consume and the preference for liquidity, and with a monetary system which rigidly links the quantity of money to the stock of the precious metals, it will be essential for the maintenance of prosperity that the authorities should pay close attention to the state of the balance of trade. For a favourable balance, provided it is not too large, will prove extremely stimulating; whilst an unfavourable balance may soon produce a state of persistent depression. — John Maynard Keynes

It is in the nature of science that once a position becomes orthodox it should be suggested to criticism ... It does not follow that, because a position is orthodox, it is wrong. — John Maynard Smith

Saving became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth — John Maynard Keynes

It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble. — John Maynard Smith

A conventional valuation which is established as the outcome of the mass psychology of a large number of ignorant individuals is liable to change violently as the result of a sudden fluctuation of opinion due to factors which do not really make much difference to the prospective yield; since there will be no strong roots of conviction to hold it steady. — John Maynard Keynes

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

Surely, then, this was a situation that merited the high-minded if somewhat sneering riposte of John Maynard Keynes: When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? — Kathryn Schulz

For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth. — John Maynard Keynes

Wicksell's old-fashioned liberalism is reminiscent of John Maynard Keynes' attitude toward conscription during World War I. Keynes opposed conscription, but he was not a pacifist. He opposed conscription because it deprived the citizen of the right to decide for himself whether or not to join in the fight. Keynes was exempt as a civil servant from conscription; so there is no need to question his sincerity. Apparently his belief in the rights of the individual against a majority of his compatriots was very strong indeed. — Mancur Olson

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

The idea behind stamped money is sound. — John Maynard Keynes