A Quote by John Maynard Keynes

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

John Maynard Keynes

Quote Topics

Dangerous Evil Good Ideas Interests Vested Vested Interest Vested Interests Which

Quote Author

John Maynard Keynes
English - Economist
June 5, 1883 - April 21, 1946

One may say that evil does not exist for subjective man at all, that there exist only different conceptions of good. Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and kill one another in the interests of good.

G. I. Gurdjieff

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

George Bernard Shaw

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

John Maynard Keynes

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

When anything is in the presence of evil, but is not as yet evil, the presence of good arouses the desire of good in that thing; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil only, and the good has no friendship with evil.

Plato

When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands the unfitness of the means. The ulterior motives with which youabsorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.... Evil is whatever distracts. Evil knows of the Good, but Good does not know of Evil. Knowledge of oneself is something only Evil has. One means that Evil has is the dialogue.... One cannot pay Evil in installments--and one always keeps on trying to.

Franz Kafka

The Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion.

Albert Einstein

National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.

Edward Sapir

Evil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good.

Blaise Pascal

Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest.

John Kenneth Galbraith

If you're making a film about a band or a songwriter or whomever, there's a publisher, there's a record label, and there are people who are vested interests in that film. But with back-up singers, because they did stuff for everybody, there's no one party that has any vested interest in seeing the story told.

Morgan Neville

Anyone who maintains absolute standards of good and evil is dangerous. As dangerous as a maniac with a loaded revolver.

Tom Robbins

The thing that interests me is the good and evil in everybody. I don't have conventional heroes in the films that I directed, because I believe there's good and evil in everybody.

William Friedkin

Climate change should not fundamentally be seen as a political or partisan issue, but it has been turned into a political football primarily by the climate deniers who have a vested interested in maintaining the status quo. That includes certain industrial interests, financial interests and political interests.

James Balog

This is a world of good and evil. Wherever there is good, evil follows, but beyond and behind all these manifestations, all these contradictions, the Vedanta finds out that Unity. It says, "Give up what is evil and give up what is good." What remains then? Behind good and evil stands something which is yours, the real you, beyond every evil, and beyond every good too, and it is that which is manifesting itself as good and bad. Know that first, and then and then alone you will be a true optimist, and not before; for then you will be able to control everything.