Portable Wisdom

Author: John Maynard Keynes

Quotations


Technological Unemployment

We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely, technological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.

From the essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”

— 1930


To live wisely and agreeably and well

Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.

From the essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”

— 1930


Civilization was a thin and precarious crust

We were not aware that civilization was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and the will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across and guilefully preserved.

From the essay “My Early Beliefs”

— 1938

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