John Maynard Keynes quotes focus on finance, society and many issues that arose after the world wars. He was one of the top economist in his day and brought change to the financial system of the world. He lived during the great depression where men like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie were bustling businessmen in America.
John Maynard Keynes Wiki
John Maynard Keynes 1st Baron Keynes CB FBA, was a British economist who made a huge impact on the economy of the world. His ideas were drafted into many of the governments of today and have become a practical method of governing finances. Some of his methods were later rejected by Winston Churchill who was Prime Minister in the 1940s
Best John Maynard Keynes Quotes
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”
“The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”
“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
“Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”
“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”
“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.”
“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”
“The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.”
“In my sentences I go where no man has gone before.”
“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
“When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.”
“Ideas shape the course of history.”
“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?”
“The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.”
“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
“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.”
“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.”
“By this means the government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.”
“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.”
“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.”
“When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?”