Keynes Quotes

• 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

  John Maynard Keynes

  Country, Jobs, Done

  1936 The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

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• The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare.

  Ben Bernanke

  Running, Long, Might

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• If you put two economists xin a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.

  Winston Churchill

  Two, Three, Investing

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• Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be wrong, but all of which ultimately point to the right answer. Now Keynes, in 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,' set forth a hypothesis which was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a great man!

  Milton Friedman

  Beautiful, Mean, Men

  Opinion Journal, July 22, 2006.

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• Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter's prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes' excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.

  Benito Mussolini

  Book, Political, Politics

  "Universal Aspects of Fascism" by James Strachey Barnes, Williams and Norgate, London: UK, (pp. 113-114), 1928.

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• I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes

  George Soros

  Kind, Economic, Reformers

  George Soros (2003). “The Alchemy of Finance”, p.372, John Wiley & Sons

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• I've been a faithful reader of the great classical documents of economics, or tried to be. The first book in the field that I ever read was Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall. I suppose subsequently I would have to pick out Keynes, Adam Smith, Marx.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Book, Faithful, Fields

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• In the Western world, countries that were once the crucible of freedom are slipping remorselessly into a thinly disguised serfdom in which an ever higher proportion of your assets are annexed by the state as superlandlord. Big government is where nations go to die - not in Keynes' 'long run,' but sooner than you think.

  Mark Steyn

  Running, Country, Thinking

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• Keynes vs Hayek? Friedman vs Krugman? Those are the wrong intellectual debates. Its you vs. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, You vs. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO. And you are losing...

  Barry Ritholtz

  Intellectual, Losing, Debate

  "The Left Right Paradigm is Over: Its You vs. Corporations" by Barry Ritholtz, ritholtz.com. September 27, 2010.

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• There is an unearthly, mystical element in Friedman's thought. The mere existence of a stock of money somehow promotes expenditure. But insofar as he offers an intelligible theory, it is made up of elements borrowed from Keynes.

  Joan Robinson

  Elements, Theory, Made

  Joan Robinson (1973). “Economic heresies: some old-fashioned questions in economic theory”

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• Keynes tried to show that market economies could settle in equilibrium states in which the labour market did not clear, and in which the level of unemployment was high. He believed that this was due to a particular example of market failure, developed in his concept of effective demand.

  Paul Ormerod

  Example, Unemployment, Levels

  "The Death of Economics". Book by Paul Ormerod, 1994.

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• Keynes did not teach us how to perform the miracle of turning a stone into bread, but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Miracle, Stones, Corn

  Ludwig Von Mises (1974). “Planning for freedom, and twelve other essays and addresses”

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• Attempting mischievous and salutary irritation of his peers ... Keynes may only succeed in becoming an academic idol of our worst cranks and charlatans - not to mention the possibilities of the book as the economic bible of a fascist movement.

  Henry Calvert Simons

  Book, Irritation, Idols

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• There's no automatic mechanism in a market system that reconciles the desire to save and the desire to invest. And therefore, the government has to sort of do something or the Federal Reserve, the Fed, or the Central Bank, or whatever, it has to intervene. It has to create enough investment for the economy not to suffer from a fall in aggregate demand. So, if you don't have a balance within the market system itself, then you need an external balance and that's what I think Keynes believed.

  Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky

  Fall, Thinking, Suffering

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Only someone as puffed up and demented as John Maynard Keynes, every left wing fascist's sainted mentor in this connection, could manage to convince himself that taxing America's Productive Class can restore it to prosperity. In point of fact, it's like screwing for chastity, guzzling alcohol for sobriety, or gorging to fight gluttony. It's like killing indiscriminately for peace - oops, Democrats, Republicans and their moral and spiritual ilk have devoutly believed that particular bit of perverse nonsense since at least the War of 1812.

  L. Neil Smith

  Spiritual, War, Fighting

  "A Little Austrian Flea". The Libertarian Enterprise, www.ncc-1776.org. March 01, 2009.

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• Keynes was chief economic adviser to the British government and largely responsible for keeping the British economy afloat at a time when more than half of our gross national product, and all of our foreign exchange, was being spent on the war. I was lucky to be present at one of his rare appearances in Cambridge, when he gave a lecture with the title "Newton, the Man." Four years later he died of heart failure, precipitated by overwork and the hardships of crossing the Atlantic repeatedly in slow propeller-driven airplanes under wartime conditions.

  Freeman Dyson

  War, Heart, Airplane

  "The Scientist As Rebel". Book by Freeman Dyson, 2006.

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• It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Perfectly Normal, Aberration

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2001). “The Essential Galbraith”, p.234, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Capital movements are no longer necessarily related to the production of goods and services. Through the financial markets of the world, capital movements today are overwhelmingly concerned with the capture of and trade in property rights, the ownership of assets that magnify a corporation's wealth, power, and control. It is what John Maynard Keynes described as "a casino world"-wealth without worth.

  Eric Kierans

  Rights, Movement, World

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• Keynes, far from being a wholehearted lover of freedom, viewed with some sympathy the fascist and Communist ‘experiments’ of the 1930s.

  Ralph Raico

  Lovers, Communist, Fascists

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• Wicksell's old-fashioned liberalism is reminiscent of John Maynard Keynes' attitude toward conscription during World War I. Keynes opposed conscription, but he was not a pacifist. He opposed conscription because it deprived the citizen of the right to decide for himself whether or not to join in the fight. Keynes was exempt as a civil servant from conscription; so there is no need to question his sincerity. Apparently his belief in the rights of the individual against a majority of his compatriots was very strong indeed.

  Mancur Olson

  Strong, Attitude, War

  Mancur OLSON (2009). “The Logic of Collective Action”, p.90, Harvard University Press

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• Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.

  Thomas J. Sargent

  Brilliant, Inspired, Wonderful

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• Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of good wine.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Regret, Wine, Sleep

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• Ridiculous as our market volatility might seem to an intelligent Martian, it is our reality and everyone loves to trot out the 'quote' attributed to Keynes (but never documented): 'The market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent.' For us agents, he might better have said 'The market can stay irrational longer than the client can stay patient.'

  Jeremy Grantham

  Intelligent, Reality, Clients

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• Leonard Woolf in a letter to Lytton Strachey said he hated John Maynard Keynes "for his crass stupidity and hideous face".

  Leonard Woolf

  Stupidity, Letters, Faces

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• John Maynard Keynes essentially said, don't try and figure out what the market is doing. Figure out a business you understand, and concentrate.

  Warren Buffett

  Trying, Figures, Said

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