“To understand the crisis we need to get beyond the blame game. For at the root of the crisis was not failures of character or competence, but a failure of ideas.”

—  Robert Skidelsky

Source: John Maynard Keynes: The Return of the Master (2009), Ch. 1 : What Went Wrong?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To understand the crisis we need to get beyond the blame game. For at the root of the crisis was not failures of charac…" by Robert Skidelsky?
Robert Skidelsky photo
Robert Skidelsky 12
Economist and author 1939

Related quotes

Gulzarilal Nanda photo

“The nation is in the grip of a crisis. It is in essence a crisis of character. The obstructions and failures in other fields – economic, social and political – are just a reflection of our decline in the moral scale.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

MSN News in: Past Prime Ministers: Those who came before Gulzarilal Nanda http://news.in.msn.com/elections-2014/past-prime-ministers-those-who-came-before?page=2, MSN News, 26 May 2014.

Alan Greenspan photo

“It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that characterized the crisis.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

"Epilogue", p. 512.
2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008)
Context: Much of the securitization took the form of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) with senior credit tranches certified by rating agencies as AAA. It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that characterized the crisis.

David Harvey photo

“The onset of a crisis is usually triggered by a spectacular failure which shakes confidence in fictitious forms of capital.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 10, Finance Capital And Its Contradictions, p. 304

Marilyn Ferguson photo

“Another strong force for change: crisis. All the failures of education, like a fever, signal a deep struggle for health.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn

Bernie Sanders photo

“Here is the bottom line. When we are dealing with this crisis, we need to listen to the scientists, to the researchers, to the medical folks, not politicians. We need an emergency response to this crisis and we need it now.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2020-03-12
Now Is the Time for Solidarity: Bernie Sanders Addresses Health and Economic Crisis Facing US as Coronavirus Spreads
Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/12/now-time-solidarity-bernie-sanders-addresses-health-and-economic-crisis-facing-us
2020

David Allen photo

“The present-ness demanded by a crisis is possible w/out crisis. Understand the keys to appropriate engagement. GTD.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

13 August 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/235132922565369857
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“The worst of failure in this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers.”

James Agate (1877–1947) British diarist and critic

Ego 7 (1945), p. 153, July 21, 1944.
On von Stauffenberg's bomb plot.

Bernie Sanders photo

“No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into another financial crisis … If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

[Huntley, Steve, Steve Huntley: Sanders the socialist sure gets it right on big banks, http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/569095/sanders-socialist-sure-gets-right-big-banks, 1 May 2015, Chicago Sun-Times, 2 May 2015]
2010s, 2015

Milton Friedman photo

“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Preface (1982 edition), p. ix
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Lester B. Pearson photo

“This was not enough for a minority now demanding much sterner action to meet the Nazi threat. At the head of this group was Winston Churchill. His prestige, however, after his stand during the abdication crisis [in late spring 1937] and his aggressive, bellicose speeches on the need for more arms, was at a low point. Not many listened to him yet. He was still considered an irresponsible failure and an unreliable character.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume One

Related topics