Keynes could be gross, crude, coarse, he had a Rabelaisian wit, an obsessive curiosity about sexual matters, and he often lacked refinement. He could be a show-off and a know-all. This emanated from his remarkably quick and piercing mind, his ability to ‘gut’ books in a few hours (not that this did not show now and then) and an insatiable curiosity about all manner of things. Keynes had the class and racial prejudices of his time, expressed in distasteful, often disgraceful terms to modern eyes and ears, yet rarely acted upon in his actual relationships. For at his core he was a deeply serious person, still a Victorian as well as an Edwardian, seeking for a philosophy by which to live in both private and public life.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Keynes could be gross, crude, coarse, he had a Rabelaisian wit, an obsessive curiosity about sexual matters, and he often lacked refinement. He could be a show-off and a know-all. This emanated from his remarkably quick and piercing mind, his ability to ‘gut’ books in a few hours (not that this did not show now and then) and an insatiable curiosity about all manner of things. Keynes had the class and racial prejudices of his time, expressed in distasteful, often disgraceful terms to modern eyes and ears, yet rarely acted upon in his actual relationships. For at his core he was a deeply serious person, still a Victorian as well as an Edwardian, seeking for a philosophy by which to live in both private and public life." in the context of "G. C. Harcourt and Sean Turnell, "On Skidelsky’s Keynes", Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 40, 19 November 2005" to mean that wisdom is timeless.