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Quotes from The Economic Consequences of the Peace — John Maynard Keynes

1883–1946 England

← All quotes by John Maynard Keynes

16 quotes

Men will not always die quietly.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

Economic privation proceeds by easy stages, and so long as men suffer it patiently the outside world cares little.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

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

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

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

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

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

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, — but generally to be obtained at your neighbor's expense.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

He had one illusion — France; and one disillusion — mankind, including Frenchmen, and his colleagues not least.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp.

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.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

The division of the spoils between the victors will also provide employment for a powerful office, whose doorsteps the greedy adventurers and jealous concession hunters of twenty or thirty nations will crowd and defile.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

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.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Maynard Keynes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.