WIST

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

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
(Attributed)

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

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
A Tract on Monetary Reform, ch. 3 (1923)

The engine which drives Enterprise is not Thrift, but Profit.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
A Treatise on Money, ch. 3 (1930)

The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: Economic Efficiency, Social Justice, and Individual Liberty.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
Liberalism and Labour (1926)

Material Poverty provides the incentive to change precisely in situations where there is little margin for experiments. Material Prosperity removes the incentive just when it might be safe to take a chance.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
The End of Laissez-Faire, ch. 5 (1926)

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 (1883-1946) English economist
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Preface (1936)

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 (1883-1946) English economist
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, ch. 24 (1936)

It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics (along with the other moral sciences), where it is often impossible to bring one’s ideas to a conclusive test either formal or experimental.

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Preface (1936)

The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author’s assault upon them is to be successful, — a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression. The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. 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 (1883-1946) English economist
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Preface (1936)