John Maynard Keynes

"Unemployment and underemployment need not be permanent features of economic organization."

"The very poor and the powerful and influential require different modes of explanation."

"I am an ardent admirer of the Chinese civilization, and find much to learn from it."

"The most ferocious disagreements are often amongst those who are very close to each other."

"The process of capital accumulation is the engine of economic growth."

"I am afraid of mass movements, even when I agree with their objects."

"The evolution of economic society is the evolution of the manner in which we produce wealth."

"There are no such things as purely economic questions. All economic questions are also psychological and ethical."

"The great events of history are often decided by small causes."

"Self-interest and the public interest are frequently in conflict and cannot always be harmonized."

"One cannot separate the analysis of economic institutions from their social and political context."

"There is nothing so disastrous as a rational policy pursued by a mad nation."

"The nature of production as a whole is fundamentally similar to the nature of the magic of mankind."

"To understand something is to be satisfied with it."

"Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and it is a quality that the American people should never be slow to show."

"The most dangerous of all agents are ideas which have been born of an honest tradition and have been reared in the bosom of a respectable orthodoxy."

"It is the business of the State to reduce and to control the power of the capitalist, not to defer to it."

"The economic foundations of our civilization are on the verge of collapse."

"One must contemplate the variety of human motivation and the heterogeneity of human nature."

"Our object in the short period is to preserve employment, and in the long period to increase it."

"Laissez-faire was always maintained by a very large measure of government intervention."

"The chief task of mankind is to secure the organization of economic forces in the modern world."

"We must be free to adapt our principles to new circumstances."

"The individual is not truly free unless he is economically secure."

"The influence of quantity on quality is frequently underestimated in economic analysis."

"Persuasion is often more powerful than coercion in achieving social objectives."

"The fundamental economic problem cannot be solved by economics alone."

"One cannot divorce economics from ethics and morality."

"The task of economics is to illuminate the choices available to a society."

"I am convinced that the future will vindicate the correctness of my analysis."