Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

Keynes's idea was very simple. Monetary and fiscal policy should have a single goal, jointly pursued, of maintaining a full employment level aggregate demand.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
I could never take seriously the standard view that historians should take ideas as give, and confine themselves to their effects; or even worse, the Marxist-cum-Freudian view that ideas have no independent effects, but are themselves the effects of economic or psychological causes. If one accepts that ideas shape events, then a historian has to be able to describe the ideas or doctrines relevant to his topic as accurately as can a theologian, a philosopher, or an economist. If that requires a specialised training, so be it. Any account of Keynes's influence that failed to engage with his 'theology' would be seriously incomplete as history.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
Keynes's economic philosophy is thus made up of three interdependent parts: his technical macroeconomics, his embattled political philosophy and his ultimate ethical purpose.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
What started Keynes on the road to the Keynesian Revolution was the incomplete British recovery from the depression of 1920 to 1922.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
Keynes is not just for the foxhole, but for the emerging world order.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
In ethics Keynes was a Platonist, in politics he was an Aristotelian. His ethics pointed him towards the ideal; his politics towards moderation.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
Maynard Keynes was born into a certain civilisation at a particular moment of history, and was one of its foremost products. He inherited both its aspirations and its tensions. He grew up in the shadow of its great figures, notably Henry Sidgwick and Alfred Marshall, the teachers and colleagues of is father. His style of thought and way of life both bear Cambridge's unmistakable imprint.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
Historians are pessimistic by nature, because the only future they can imagine is the past.

Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky