Quote #41

I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

More from John Maynard Keynes

  1. A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
  2. Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion - how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so…
  3. I can be influenced by what seems to me to be justice and good sense; but the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisi…
  4. For my part I think that capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative s…
  5. How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia wh…
  6. 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, i…
  7. Comfort and habits let us be ready to forego, but I am not ready for a creed which does not care how much it destroys the liberty and secur…
  8. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can onl…

All John Maynard Keynes quotes