Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

Meaning of the quote

This quote means that thinking too much about the distant future can distract us from dealing with what's happening right now. Keynes is saying that in the end, we'll all die, so we shouldn't get too caught up in long-term plans and instead focus on the present. The long run isn't a reliable guide for making decisions in the short term.

About John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes was an influential 20th-century English economist and philosopher whose ideas revolutionized macroeconomics and government economic policies. He challenged the prevailing economic theories of his time and advocated for the use of fiscal and monetary policies to stabilize the economy during recessions and depressions.

More about the author

More quotes from John Maynard Keynes

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.

John Maynard Keynes

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The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

John Maynard Keynes

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Ideas shape the course of history.

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It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

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There is no harm in being sometimes wrong – especially if one is promptly found out.

John Maynard Keynes

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The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

John Maynard Keynes

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The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

John Maynard Keynes

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If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

John Maynard Keynes

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Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

John Maynard Keynes

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Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

John Maynard Keynes

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The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

John Maynard Keynes

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The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn’t deliver the goods.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

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

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

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

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

In the long run we are all dead.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

John Maynard Keynes

British economist (1883-1946)