Quotes from David Ricardo

A rise in wages, from an alteration in the value of money, produces a general effect on price, and for that reason it produces no real effect whatever on profits.

It is not by the absolute quantity of produce obtained by either class, that we can correctly judge of the rate of profit, rent, and wages, but by the quantity of labour required to obtain that produce.

A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money.

But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.

If then the prosperity of the commercial classes, will most certainly lead to accumulation of capital, and the encouragement of productive industry; these can by no means be so surely obtained as by a fall in the price of corn.

Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.

Whether a bank lent one million, ten million, or a hundred millions, they would not permanently alter the market rate of interest; they would alter only the value of the money they issued.

Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.

Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

...I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.

Gold, on the contrary, though of little use compared with air or water, will exchange for a great quantity of other goods.

Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

Labor, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labor is that price which is necessary to enable the laborers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.

The facility of obtaining food is beneficial in two ways to the owners of capital, it at the same time raises profits and increases the amount of consumable commodities.

By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them.

Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.

There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.

After all the fertile land in the immediate neighbourhood of the first settlers were cultivated, if capital and population increased, more food would be required, and it could only be procured from land not so advantageously situated.

I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.

The diminution of money in one country, and its increase in another, do not operate on the price of one commodity only, but on the prices of all.

In the same manner if any nation wasted part of its wealth, or lost part of its trade, it could not retain the same quantity of circulating medium which it before possessed.

Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production.

The facility of obtaining food is beneficial in two ways to the owners of capital, it at the same time raises profits and increases the amount of consumable commodities.