Thinking Citizen Blog — Best Things Ever Said by an Economist: John Keynes
Thinking Citizen Blog — Tuesday is Economics, Finance, and Business Day
Today’s topic — Best Things Ever Said by an Economist: John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)
Keynes was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. He was also one of the tallest (6 ft. 7), most quotable, and most eccentric. Along with Virginia Woolf and painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Keynes was a member of the “Bloomsbury” group of which it was said: “They lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles.” (Dorothy Parker) Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate. COMPROMISE, TIME HORIZONS, BANKERS
1. “I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.” (1917)
2. “But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we are all dead.” (1923)
3. “The old saying holds: Owe your banker 1000 pounds and you are at his mercy. Owe him 1,000,000 pounds and the position is reversed.” (1945)
ON THE POWER OF DEFUNCT ECONOMISTS
1. “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful and is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.”
2. “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.”
3. “But, soon or late, it is ideas not vested interests which are dangerous, for good or evil.”
ON THE LONG TERM INVESTOR — General Theory of Employment, chapter 12
1. “It is the long-term investor, he who most promotes the public interest, who will in practice come in for most criticism, wherever investment funds are managed by committees or boards or banks.”
2. “For it is in the essence of his behaviour that he should be eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of average opinion.”
3. “If he is successful, that will only confirm the general belief in his rashness; and if in the short run he is unsuccessful, which is very likely, he will not receive much mercy.”
NB “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
John Maynard Keynes — Wikiquote
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes
YOUR TURN — Please share:
a.) the coolest thing you learned this week related to business, economics, finance.
b.) the coolest thing you learned in your life related to business, economics, finance.
c.) anything at all related to business, economics, finance.
d.) anything at all
