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Jean-Baptiste Say

Jean-Baptiste Say Quotes

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Famous Jean-Baptiste Say Quotes

“The occupation of the stock-jobber yields no new or useful product; consequently having no product of his own to give in exchange, he has no revenue to subsist upon, but what he contrives to make out of the unskilfulness or ill-fortune of gamesters like himself.”

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Book:A treatise on political economy, or, the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth
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“The command of a large sum is a dangerous temptation to a national administration. Though accumulated at their expense, the people rarely, if ever profit by it: yet in point of fact, all value, and consequently, all wealth, originates with the people.”

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Book:A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth
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“Wherefore it is impossible to succeed in comparing wealth of different eras or different nations. This, in political economy, like squaring the circle in mathematics, is impracticable, for want of a common mean or measure to go by.”

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Book:A treatise on political economy: or, The production, distribution and consumption of wealth
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“Capital can seldom be made productive, without undergoing several changes both of form and of place, the risk of which is always more or less alarming to persons unaccustomed to the operations of industry; whereas, on the contrary, landed property produces without any change of either quality or position.”

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Book:A treatise on political economy, or, the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth
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“Dominion by land or sea will appear equally destitute of attraction, when it comes to be generally understood, that all its advantages rest with the rulers, and that the subjects at large derive no benefit whatever.”

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Book:History of Economic Theory: The Selected Writings of Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, and J.R. McCulloch
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“All those who, since Adam Smith, have turned their attention to Political Economy, agree that in reality we do not buy articles of consumption with money, the circulating medium with which we pay for them. We must in the first instance have bought this money itself by the sale of our produce.”

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Book:Letters to Thomas Robert Malthus on Political Economy and Stagnation of Commerce
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“To a proprietor of a mine, the silver money is a produce with which he buys what he has occasion for. To all those through whose hands this silver afterwards passes, it is only the price of the produce which they themselves have raised by means of their property in land, their capitals, or their industry. In selling them they in the first place exchange them for money, and afterwards they exchange the money for articles of consumption.”

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Book:Letters to Thomas Robert Malthus on Political Economy and Stagnation of Commerce
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“If one individual, or one class, can call in the aid of authority to ward off the effects of competition, it acquires a privilege and at the cost of the whole community; it can make sure of profits not altogether due to the productive services rendered, but composed in part of an actual tax upon consumers for its private profit' which tax it commonly shares with the authority that thus unjustly lent its support.”

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Book:A treatise on political economy: or, The production, distribution and consumption of wealth
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“The property a man has in his own industry, is violated, whenever he is forbidden the free exercise of his faculties or talents, except insomuch as they would interfere with the rights of third parties.”

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Book:A treatise on political economy; or, The production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. Tr. by C.R. Prinsep, with notes
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