He had one illusion - France; and one disillusion - mankind, including Frenchmen.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a contrast between idealism and realism regarding one's view of a nation and its people.
John Maynard Keynes uses this quote to illustrate the duality of human perception. He points out that while one can hold an idealized view of a place, such as France, there can simultaneously exist a disillusionment with humanity as a whole, including the very people admired. It evokes the tension between romanticized beliefs about a culture and the stark realities of human nature.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about national pride and the realities of society during a cultural event.
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.
I have a theatrical temperament. I'm not interested in the middle road - maybe because everyone's on it. Rationality, reasonableness bewilder me.
Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.
All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.
I'm not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We're not 'celebrities', whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They're what people meet.
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave.
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