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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 How to Pay for the War (1940)

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More quotes by John Maynard Keynes

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

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

Essays in Persuasion (1931)

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.

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The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Maynard Keynes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.