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“It is not easy for a free community to organise for war. We are not accustomed to listen to experts or prophets. Our strength lies in an ability to improvise. Yet an open mind to untried ideas is also necessary. No-one can say when the end will come. In the war services it is recognised that the best security for an early conclusion is a plan for long endurance.”

John Maynard Keynes

Source: How to Pay for the War (1940), Ch. 1 : The Character of the Problem

“The real struggle today, just as in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, is between a view of the world termed liberalism or radicalism, for which the primary object of government and of foreign policy is peace, freedom of trade and intercourse, and economic wealth and that other view, militarist or rather diplomatic, which thinks in terms of power, prestige, national or personal glory, the imposition of a culture and hereditary or racial prejudice. To the good English radical, the latter is so unreal, so crazy in its combination of futility and evil, that he is often in danger of forgetting or disbelieving its actual existence.”

John Maynard Keynes

published in Manchester Guardian (1922); in Collected Writings, Volume 17, p. 370

“Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit.”

John Maynard Keynes

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Robert Malthus: The First of the Cambridge Economists, p. 148

“There were endless possibilities, not out of reach.”

John Maynard Keynes

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 253

“The nature of unemployment today is totally different from what it was a year ago. It is no longer caused by a deficiency of demand. There is no longer a potential surplus supply of the things we want. The transition to full employment is hindered by two obstacles. The first is due to the difficulty of shifting labour to the points where it is wanted. The second— and, for the time being, the chief—-obstacle is caused by the difficulties, other than the shortage of labour, in the way of existing demand becoming effective.”

John Maynard Keynes

Source: How to Pay for the War (1940), Ch. 3 : Our Output Capacity and the National Income

“All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas — and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists.”

John Maynard Keynes

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Trotsky On England, p. 91

“In peace time, that is to say, the size of the cake depends on the amount of work done. But in war time the size of the cake is fixed. If we work harder, we can fight better. But we must not consume more.”

John Maynard Keynes

Source: How to Pay for the War (1940), Ch. 1 : The Character of the Problem

“That she [France] has anything to fear from Germany in the future which we can foresee, except what she may herself provoke, is a delusion. When Germany has recovered her strength and pride, as in due time she will, many years must pass before she again casts her eyes Westwards. Germany's future now lies to the East, and it is in that direction her hopes and ambitions, when they revive, will certainly turn.”

John Maynard Keynes book A Revision of the Treaty

A Revision of the Treaty (London: Macmillan, 1922), p. 186

“The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section III, p. 19

“Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.”

John Maynard Keynes

As quoted in Isms (2006) by Gregory Bergman, p. 105
Attributed

“The future life of Europe was not their concern; its means of livelihood was not their anxiety. Their preoccupations, good and bad alike, related to frontiers and nationalities, to the balance of power, to imperial aggrandizements, to the future enfeeblement of a strong and dangerous enemy, to revenge, and to the shifting by the victors of their unbearable financial burdens on to the shoulders of the defeated.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter IV, p. 56

“The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section III, p. 20

“You can't push on a string.”

John Maynard Keynes

Attributed by [Hal R., Varian, http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/people/hal/NYTimes/2003-06-04.html, Dealing with Deflation, The New York Times, June 5, 2003, 2007-01-11]
Attributed

“This state of affairs is not an inevitable consequence of a decreased capacity to produce wealth. I see no reason why, with good management, real wages need be reduced on the average. It is the consequence of a misguided monetary policy.”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

Essays in Persuasion (1931), The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill (1925)

“By what modus operandi does credit restriction attain this result? In no other way than by the deliberate intensification of unemployment.”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

Essays in Persuasion (1931), The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill (1925)

“To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's bluff in that party.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

On David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, in Chapter III, p. 41
The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

“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.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section I, p. 15

“If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.”

John Maynard Keynes

Attributed by [Will, Hutton, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/economics-economy-john-keynes, Will the real Keynes stand up, not this sad caricature?, Guardian, November 2, 2008, 2009-02-05] <br class="br">Actual quote: &quot;the Stock Exchange revalues many investments every day and the revaluations give a frequent opportunity to the individual (though not to the community as a whole) to revise his commitments. It is as though a farmer, having tapped his barometer after breakfast, could decide to remove his capital from the farming business between 10 and 11 in the morning and reconsider whether he should return to it later in the week.&quot; <br class="br"> The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935), Ch. 12 http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch12.htm <br class="br">Attributed

“But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future.”

John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter IV, Section III, p. 105

“Are the solutions offered us always to be too late? Shall we in Great Britain invite three-quarters of the world, including the whole of our Empire, to join with us in evolving a new currency system which shall be stable in terms of commodities? Or would the gold standard countries be interested to learn the terms, which must needs be strict, on which we should be prepared to re-enter the system of a drastically reformed gold standard?”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

Essays in Persuasion (1931), The End of Gold Standard (1931)