Quotations

John Maynard Keynes


View the biography of John Maynard Keynes


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.
The Application of Probability to Conduct.
[Newton's] peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen through it.
Like all his type, Newton was wholly aloof from women.
I can't remember my telephone number, but I know it was in the high numbers.
Quoted in D MacHale, Comic Sections (Dublin 1993)
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
Quoted in K E Drexler, Engines of Creation: the Coming Era of Nanotechnology, (New York 1987) 231.
In the long run, we are all dead.
A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)
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.
The Application of Probability to Conduct
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?