Quote

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

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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
Would
Happiness
Lays
Regime
Furnaces
Men
Free
Consequence
Regimes
Animosity
Individual
Trade
Collectives
Devised
Political
Labor
Coal
Frontier
Another
Side
Collective
Intercourse
Littles
Ways
Labour
Frontiers
Little
Sides
Iron
Blast
Animosities
Way
Economic
Prefer
Economist
Impoverish

More quotes by John Maynard Keynes

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Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.
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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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
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The central principle of investment is to go contrary to the general opinion, on the grounds that if everyone agreed about its merits, the investment is inevitably too dear and therefore unattractive.
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... a speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.
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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The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom.
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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A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
John Maynard Keynes
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Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.
John Maynard Keynes
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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
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Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo ! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit.
John Maynard Keynes
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...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
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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.
John Maynard Keynes
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The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists .
John Maynard Keynes
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I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely objectionable.
John Maynard Keynes
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I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
John Maynard Keynes
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It is the long-term investor...who will in practice come in for the most criticism... For it is the essence of his behavior that he should be eccentric, unconventional, and rash in the eyes of average opinion
John Maynard Keynes
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The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.
John Maynard Keynes
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It is impossible that the intention of the entrepreneur who has borrowed in order to increase investment can become effective (except in substitution for investment by other entrepreneurs which would have occurred otherwise) at a faster rate than the public decide to increase their savings
John Maynard Keynes