John Maynard Keynes

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession _ as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life _ will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.

How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?

The war has ended with every one owing every one else immense sums of money. Germany owes a large sum to the Allies, the Allies owe a large sum to Great Britain, and Great Britain owes a large sum to the United States. The holders of war loan in every country are owed a large sum by the States, and the States in its turn is owed a large sum by these and other taxpayers. The whole position is in the highest degree artificial, misleading, and vexatious. We shall never be able to move again, unless we can free our limbs from these paper shackles.

Our attitude to these criticisms must be determined by our whole moral and emotional reaction to the future of international relations and the Peace of the World.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. 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.

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

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.