Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.
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.
He had one illusion – France; and one disillusion – mankind, including Frenchmen.
It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability.
I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize – not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years – the way the world thinks about economic problems.
It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.
Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.
It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.
What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man was that age which came to an end in August 1914.
Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians.
How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?
I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely objectionable.
Men will not always die quietly.
It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges.
I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organizing investments.
Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.
An investor who proposes to ignore near-term market fluctuations needs greater resources for safety and must not operate on so large a scale, if at all, with borrowed money.
If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.