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.
Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.
If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations.
Your words are so powerful and precious. Learn to harness them, guide them and let them work for you.
I have lived to see that being seventeen is no protection against becoming seventy, but to know this needs the experience of a lifetime, for no imagination copes with it.
I'll give you some symptoms of a sign that your faith is deteriorating-whenever you face all of your problems and you trust only your plans to get you out-it is a sign that your faith is deteriorating.
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