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Too large a proportion of recent mathematical economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.

John Maynard Keynes

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John Maynard Keynes
Age: 62 †
Born: 1883
Born: June 5
Died: 1946
Died: April 21
Businessperson
Diplomat
Economist
Mathematician
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
Politician
Professor
Lord Keynes
Baron Keynes of Tilton
Rest
Mathematical
Initials
Loses
Investing
Assumptions
Unhelpful
Real
Economics
Recent
Imprecise
World
Allow
Complexity
Complexities
Mere
Assumption
Maze
Sight
Author
Mazes
Large
Symbols
Initial
Lose
Proportion
Pretentious

More quotes by John Maynard Keynes

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[T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.
John Maynard Keynes
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Perhaps a day might come when there would be at last be enough to go round, and when posterity could enter into the enjoyment of our labors.
John Maynard Keynes
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It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
John Maynard Keynes
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For my own part, I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities of incomes and wealth.
John Maynard Keynes
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The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit.
John Maynard Keynes
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The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity-preference was the outstanding evil, the prime impediment to the growth of wealth, in the ancient and medieval worlds.
John Maynard Keynes
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Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.
John Maynard Keynes
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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
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The considerations upon which expectations of prospective yields are based are partly existing facts which we can assume to be known more or less for certain, and partly future events which can only be forecasted with more or less confidence.
John Maynard Keynes
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When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.
John Maynard Keynes
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Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.
John Maynard Keynes
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The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
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When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exulted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the highest virtues.
John Maynard Keynes
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The duty of saving became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.
John Maynard Keynes
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Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis , and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.
John Maynard Keynes
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I don't feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens.
John Maynard Keynes
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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.
John Maynard Keynes
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Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.
John Maynard Keynes
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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
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Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits-a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.
John Maynard Keynes