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But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

— John Maynard Keynes A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)

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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.

Essays in Persuasion (1931)

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.

Essays in Persuasion (1931)

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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From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

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If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

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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.