Explore Quotes by John Maynard Keynes

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

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

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

Ideas shape the course of history.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

In the long run we are all dead.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

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 final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.