Quotes About Economics

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

Our country has shown a lack of will to resist its own disintegration .. . Canada is practically the only country left in the world which is a pure colony; colonial in psychology as well as in mercantile economics.

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Expenditure rises to meet income.

It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch Is offering too little and asking too much. The French are with equal advantage content, So we clap on Dutch bottoms just 20%.

Competition means decentralized planning by many separate persons.

All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage.

One man's wage rise is another man's price increase.

Pounds are the sons, not of pounds, but of pence.

Capital is past savings accumulated for future production.

Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.

Inflation is defined as the quality that makes balloons larger and candy bars smaller.

You build on cost and you borrow on value.

Commerce links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests.

Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.

Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

The state, it cannot too often be repeated, does nothing, and can give nothing, which it does not take from somebody.

The economic interpretation of history does not necessarily mean that all events are determined solely by economic forces. It simply means that economic facts are the ever recurring decisive forces, the chief points in the process of history.