Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
Search Quotes Search Sages Search Chapters

John Maynard Keynes

1883 – 1946 CE

Revolutionary economist credited with saving capitalism

One of the most influential economists of all time, founder of modern macroeconomic theory, most effective strategist in ending the great depression, and leading representative of modern liberalism; Keynes became one of the most important and influential thinkers of the 20th century. Promoting the—at the time—radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may, he helped jump-start the world’s economies out of depression and into history’s most affluent periods. Challenging the prevalent economic theories of Adam Smith, most of the developed world adopted his theories, government policy focused on demand instead of supply, prosperity spread. Attacked by monetarists like Milton Friedman in the 1970’s his recommended policies fell from favor which led to the the 2007-8 financial crisis until they were re-adopted.

Eras

Unlisted Sources

Quotes by John Maynard Keynes (14 quotes)

“Difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.”

Themes: Power

Comments: Click to comment

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers are much more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. [Most] are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

Themes: Economics

Comments: Click to comment

“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

Themes: Strategy

Comments: Click to comment

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

Themes: Capitalism

Comments: Click to comment

“Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

Themes: Education

Comments: Click to comment

“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking…. Ideas shape the course of history.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.”

Themes: Money

Comments: Click to comment

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

Themes: Here and Now

Comments: Click to comment

“There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.”

Themes: Failure

Comments: Click to comment

“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

Themes: Capitalism

Comments: Click to comment

“Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train. He has a plan to stay in Cambridge permanently.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The moral problem of our day is concerned with the love of money, with the habitual appeal to the money motive in nine-tenths of the activities of life, with the universal striving after individual economic security as the prime object of endeavor”

Comments: Click to comment

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

Themes: Economics

Comments: Click to comment

Quotes about John Maynard Keynes (3 quotes)

“I often find myself thinking that Keynes must be one of the most remarkable men that have ever lived – the quick logic, the birdlike swoop of intuition, the vivid fancy, the wide vision, above all the incomparable sense of the fitness of words, all combine to make something several degrees beyond the limit of ordinary human achievement.”

Lionel Robbins 1898 – 1994 CE
British economist who redefined the scope of economics

Comments: Click to comment

“Does he belong to our species? Or is he from some other order? There is something mythic and fabulous about him. I sense in him something massive and sphinx like, and yet also a hint of wings.”

Douglas LePan 1914 – 1998 CE

Comments: Click to comment

“Keynes's intellect was the sharpest and clearest that I have ever known. When I argued with him, I felt that I took my life in my hands, and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool.”

Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970 CE
“20th century Voltaire”

Comments: Click to comment

Comments (0)