The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

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

Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight—as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

All production is for the purpose of ultimately satisfying a consumer.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Obstinacy can bring only a penalty and no reward.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Thus public works even of doubtful utility may pay for themselves over and over again at a time of severe unemployment, if only from the diminished cost of relief expenditure.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Two pyramids, two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole;

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be; and this national weakness finds its nemesis in the stock market.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation in the United States.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

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 organising investment;

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

"To dig holes in the ground", paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services. It is not reasonable, however, that a sensible community should be content to remain dependent on such fortuitous and often wasteful mitigations when once we understand the influences upon which effective demand depends.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

If I am right in supposing it to be comparatively easy to make capital-goods so abundant that the marginal efficiency of capital is zero, this may be the most sensible way of gradually getting rid of many of the objectionable features of capitalism.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Thus those reformers, who look for a remedy by creating artificial carrying-costs for the money through the device of requiring legal-tender currency to be periodically stamped at a prescribed cost in order to retain its quality as money, or in analogous ways, have been on the right track; and the practical value of their proposals deserves consideration.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

We are, as I have said, one equation short.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

For the importance of money essentially flows from its being a link between the present and the future.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Once doubt begins it spreads rapidly.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

We reach a condition where there is a shortage of houses, but where nevertheless no one can afford to live in the houses that there are.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

I am myself impressed by the great social advantages of increasing the stock of capital until it ceases to be scarce.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught;

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Never in history was there a method devised of such efficacy for setting each country's advantage at variance with its neighbours' as the international gold (or, formerly, silver) standard.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity-preference was the outstanding evil, the prime impediment to the growth of wealth, in the ancient and medieval worlds.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The idea behind stamped money is sound.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

It is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital.

— The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money