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?
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of being open-minded and willing to change one's perspective based on new evidence.
In this quote, John Maynard Keynes reflects on the intellectual honesty required in discourse and decision-making. He acknowledges that his views have evolved as he has encountered new evidence, prompting a change in his stance on an issue. This illustrates the necessity of adaptability in thought and highlights the value of critical thinking, suggesting that one should not be rigidly attached to previous beliefs when presented with compelling new information.
In practice
This quote can be used during a debate to emphasize the importance of adapting one's viewpoint based on new information.
As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method of investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes.
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.
The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
We will not have any more crashes in our time.
This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.
By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.
If you don't like what you're doing, it's unlikely anyone else will either, so be sure you are happy with your own work first.
People are best convinced by things they themselves discover.
There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.
When workmen strive to do better than well, they do confound their skill in covetousness.
Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.
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