The Philosopher
John Maynard Keynes
The face
The background
- Nationality:
- English
- Period:
- 20th century
The synopsis
John Maynard Keynes was an influential English economist born in 1883. His theories, known as Keynesian economics, revolutionized macroeconomics and advocated for government intervention to manage economic downturns. Trained in mathematics, Keynes later focused on economics, publishing "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" in 1936, which argued that aggregate demand determines economic activity. He proposed fiscal and monetary policies to combat unemployment and recessions. Keynes also served as a government advisor, particularly during World War I and the Bretton Woods Conference, shaping international economic institutions. While his influence waned in the 1970s, the 2008 financial crisis saw a resurgence of Keynesian ideas. He died in 1946, leaving a profound legacy on economic thought and policy.
The works
The quotes
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.
Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.
I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.
It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.
By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
In the long run we are all dead.
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.
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.
There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.
The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
Ideas shape the course of history.
Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.
The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.
Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated.