Quote

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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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
Many
Quality
Importance
Distasteful
Great
High
Hundred
Pseudo
Years
Moral
Highest
Accumulation
Social
Wealth
Morals
Two
Longer
Virtues
Able
Principles
Qualities
Human
Virtue
Code
Humans
Shall
Changes
Ridden

More quotes by John Maynard Keynes

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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
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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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... 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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Men will not always die quietly.
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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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
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When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.
John Maynard Keynes
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The key to selecting the winner isn't choosing the face you think is the most beautiful but rather the face other people will pick
John Maynard Keynes
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There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.
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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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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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
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It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
John Maynard Keynes
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By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
John Maynard Keynes
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There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
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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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
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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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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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The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
John Maynard Keynes