A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
-- John Maynard Keynes
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was 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. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. 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.
-- John Maynard Keynes
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
-- John Maynard Keynes
I do not know which makes a man more conservative
-- John Maynard Keynes
Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable.
-- John Maynard Keynes
Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
-- John Maynard Keynes
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
-- John Maynard Keynes
The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.
-- John Maynard Keynes
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 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.
-- John Maynard Keynes
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
-- John Maynard Keynes
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
-- John Maynard Keynes
Ideas shape the course of history.
-- John Maynard Keynes
If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.
-- John Maynard Keynes
In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.
-- John Maynard Keynes
It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
-- John Maynard Keynes
Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.
-- John Maynard Keynes
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
-- John Maynard Keynes
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.
-- John Maynard Keynes
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
-- John Maynard Keynes
The love of money as a possession
-- John Maynard Keynes
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
-- John Maynard Keynes
The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.
-- John Maynard Keynes
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
-- John Maynard Keynes
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.
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