John Maynard Keynes

In the long run we are all dead.

— John Maynard Keynes

The expected never happens; it is the unexpected always.

— John Maynard Keynes

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

— John Maynard Keynes

We will not have any more crashes in our time.

— John Maynard Keynes

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

— John Maynard Keynes

Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.

— John Maynard Keynes

God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train.

— John Maynard Keynes

The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.

— John Maynard Keynes

If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp.

— John Maynard Keynes

“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”

— John Maynard Keynes

It is a good thing to make mistakes so long as you're found out quickly.

— John Maynard Keynes

The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, — but generally to be obtained at your neighbor's expense.

— John Maynard Keynes

“With the breakdown of money economy the practice of international barter is becoming prevalent.”

— John Maynard Keynes

It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.

— John Maynard Keynes

I can't remember my telephone number, but I know it was in the high numbers.

— John Maynard Keynes

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

— John Maynard Keynes

“By this means the government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million…

— John Maynard Keynes

Never in history was there a method devised of such efficacy for setting each country's advantage at variance with its neighbours' as…

— John Maynard Keynes

The power to become habituated to his surroundings and therefore to no longer be grateful for what is good in it is…

— John Maynard Keynes

If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold…

— John Maynard Keynes

The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity-preference was the outstanding evil, the prime impediment to the growth of…

— John Maynard Keynes

Perhaps a day might come when there would be at last be enough to go round, and when posterity could enter into…

— John Maynard Keynes

Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if…

— John Maynard Keynes

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit…

— John Maynard Keynes

To suppose that safety-first consists in having a small gamble in a large number of different companies where I have no information…

— John Maynard Keynes

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes a…

— John Maynard Keynes

Nothing can preserve the integrity of contact between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the state to revise what has become intolerable.…

— John Maynard Keynes

The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke…

— John Maynard Keynes

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. . .…

— John Maynard Keynes

“The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new…

— John Maynard Keynes

It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions…

— John Maynard Keynes

It is preferable to regard labour, including, of course, the personal services of the entrepreneur, and his assistants, as the sole factor…

— John Maynard Keynes

“My feelings about Das Kapital are the same as my feelings about the Koran. I know that it is historically important and…

— John Maynard Keynes

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled…

— John Maynard Keynes

“The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts … He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand…

— John Maynard Keynes

In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic. All of us, from the Governor of the Bank of England downwards,…

— John Maynard Keynes

Nevertheless, if we contemplate a society with a somewhat stable wage-unit, with national characteristics which determine the propensity to consume and the…

— John Maynard Keynes

“The war has ended with every one owing every one else immense sums of money. Germany owes a large sum to the…

— John Maynard Keynes

“I cannot leave this subject as though its just treatment wholly depended either on our own pledges or economic facts. The policy…

— John Maynard Keynes

“What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August 1914! The…

— John Maynard Keynes