John Maynard Keynes

The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyment and realities of life—will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

I believe that in many cases the ideal size for the unit of control and organization lies somewhere between the individual and the modern State. I suggest, therefore, that progress lies in the growth and the recognition of semi-autonomous bodies within the State.

The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.

Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion—how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.

Professor [Max] Planck of Berlin, the famous originator of the Quantum Theory, once remarked to me that in early life he had thought of studying economics, but had found it too difficult!

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

He [Clemenceau] had one illusion—France; and one disillusion—mankind, including Frenchmen.

A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware, and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.

Ideas shape the course of history.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

I should have drunk more Champagne.

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

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

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

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

It [economics] is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions.

I’d rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.

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

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.

In the long run we are all dead.

Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

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