Quote

It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.

John Maynard Keynes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Alone
Long
Believe
Temporarily
Things
Astonishing
Thinking
Foolish
Economics
Particularly
Thinks

More quotes by John Maynard Keynes

Image
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
Image
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
The duty of saving became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
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
Image
...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
Image
This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. 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
Image
When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
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
Image
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
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
Image
One blames politicians, not for inconsistency but for obstinacy. They are the interpreters, not the masters, of our fate. It is their job, in fact, to register the fact accompli.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914!
John Maynard Keynes
Image
If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
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
Image
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
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
Image
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
Image
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