General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money Quotes

“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“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, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

“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 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

“If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance, no satisfaction (profit apart) in constructing a factory, a railway, a mine or a farm, there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“We should not conclude from this that everything depends on waves of irrational psychology. On the contrary, the state of long-term expectation is often steady, and, even when it is not, the other factors exert their compensating effects. We are merely reminding ourselves that human decisions affecting the future, whether personal or political or economic, cannot depend on strict mathematical expectation, since the basis for making such calculations does not exist; and that it is our innate urge to activity which makes the wheels go round, our rational selves choosing between the alternatives as best we are able, calculating where we can, but often falling back for our motive on whim or sentiment or chance.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.”
― John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“A monetary economy, we shall find, is essentially one in which changing views about the future are capable of influencing the quantity of employment and not merely its direction.”
― John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate, and doubtless owed to this its fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely, pyramid-building as well as the search for the precious metals, the fruits of which, since they could not serve the needs of man by being consumed, did not stale with abundance. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and sang dirges. Two pyramids, two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York. Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblance of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we add to the 'financial' burdens of posterity by building them houses to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment. We have to accept them as an inevitable result of applying to the conduct of the State the maxims which are best calculated to 'enrich' an individual by enabling him to pile up claims to enjoyment which he does not intend to exercise at any definite time.”
― John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. ... in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“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 influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. Madman in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“Wage flexibility may not cure an ailing economy, but simply make the rich richer and the poor poorer; you get an economy driven not by wages, but by assets and if those assets stay in the same hands, there is no dynamism and social mobility.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“All production is for the purpose of ultimately satisfying a consumer.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“Obviously consumption-goods, taken as a whole, have in this sense the longest period of production, since of every productive process they constitute the last stage. Thus if the first impulse towards the increase in effective demand comes from an increase in consumption, the initial elasticity of employment will be further below its eventual equilibrium-level than if the impulse comes from an increase in investment. Moreover,”
― John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

“The hope of a very favourable outcome, which may balance the risk in the mind of the borrower, is not available to solace the lender.”
― John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

“El día en que la abundancia de capital interfiera con la de producción puede aplazarse en la medida en que los millonarios encuentren satisfacción en edificar poderosas mansiones para encerrarse en ellas mientras vivan y pirámides para albergarse después de muertos, o, arrepintiéndose de sus pecados levanten catedrales y funden monasterios o misiones en el extranjero.”
― John Maynard Keynes, Teoría general de la ocupación, el interés y el dinero

“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the sleeves of some defunct economist”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“Practical man, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the sleeves of some defunct economist”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“Thus, after all, the actual rates of aggregate saving and spending do not depend on Precaution, Foresight, Calculation, Improvement, Independence, Enterprise, Pride or Avarice. Virtue and vice play no part. It all depends on how far the rate of interest is favourable to investment, after taking account of the marginal efficiency of capital. No, this is an overstatement. If the rate of interest were so governed as to maintain continuous full employment, virtue would resume her sway;-- the rate of capital accumulation would depend on the weakness of the propensity to consume. Thus, once again, the tribute that classical economists pay to her is due to their concealed assumption that the rate of interest always is so governed.”
― John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money