John Maynard Keynes

“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

“The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.”

“El estudio de la economía no parece exigir ningún don especializado de un orden excepcionalmente superior. ¿No es una disciplina muy fácil comparada con las ramas superiores de la filosofía o la ciencia pura?. Una disciplina fácil de la que muy pocos sobresalen. La paradoja tal vez tenga su explicación en que el economista experto debe poseer una rara combinación de dones. Debe ser en cierta medida matemático, historiador, estadista, filosofo. Debe comprender los símbolos y hablar en palabras. Debe contemplar lo particular desde la óptica de lo general y considerar en un mismo razonamiento lo abstracto y lo concreto.Debe estudiar el presente pensando en el futuro. Ningún aspecto de la naturaleza del hombre o de sus instituciones debe quedarse al margen de su consideración. Debe ser simultáneamente decidido y desinteresado; tan distante e incorruptible como un artista y, sin embargo a veces tan cerca del suelo como un político”

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”

“With the breakdown of money economy the practice of international barter is becoming prevalent.”

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

“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.”

“I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.”

“I find economics increasingly satisfactory, and I think I am rather good at it. I want to manage a railroad or organise a Trust or at least swindle the investing public”

“I cannot leave this subject as though its just treatment wholly depended either on our own pledges or economic facts. The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, - abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe. Some preach it in the name of Justice. In the great events of man's history, in the unwinding of the complex fates of nations Justice is not so simple. And if it were, nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents of rulers.”

“When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.”

“How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.”

“I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.”

“When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?”

“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

“Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.”

“How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?”

“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.”

“So it is not an accident that the Nazi lads vent a particular fury against (Einstein). He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast intellectualist, individualist, supernationalist, pacifist, inky, plump... How should they know the glory of the free-ranging intellect and soft objective sympathy to whom money and violence, drink and blood and pomp, mean absolutely nothing?”

“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.”

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

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”

“Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.”

“In the long run, we are all dead!”

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

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

“Ideas shape the course of history.”

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

“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?”

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