Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits-a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.
Interpretation
Our positive decisions often stem from instinct and spontaneous urges rather than calculated reasoning.
John Maynard Keynes emphasizes that many of our decisions to act positively are driven by a natural instinct, referred to as 'animal spirits', rather than rational calculations of benefits and probabilities. He suggests that human behavior is often influenced more by emotional and spontaneous urges than by careful analysis, highlighting the importance of intuition in decision-making processes.
In practice
This quote can be used during a motivational speech to encourage spontaneous action in business.
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.
The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us succeed. Each patient carries his or her own doctor inside him or her. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly ... very slowly.
Write down the thoughts and even more, write down a specific line. If you don't, it'll fly away forever.
Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.
Captain Shotover: How much does your soul eat? Ellie: Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with.
What you put out is already on its way back to you.
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