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.
ATTRIBUTION:
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), British economist. Essays in Persuasion, ch. 5, “The Future,” (1931).
Keynes argued that the “detestable ... love of money” and other vices of greed must continue until the economy has grown enough to satisfy human wants and provide the potential for removing poverty.
