The Difficulty Lies Not So Much

This line appears in the Preface to The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Keynes's most influential work. He wrote it as a caution to readers trained in classical economics, acknowledging that the book's greatest challenge was not presenting new ideas but dismantling the mental habits formed by the old ones. The General Theory argued that economies could remain stuck in underemployment equilibrium — a direct refutation of the classical view that markets naturally clear.