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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.

Jean-Baptiste Say

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Jean-Baptiste Say
Age: 65 †
Born: 1767
Born: January 5
Died: 1832
Died: November 14
Economist
Industrialist
Journalist
Translator
Lyons
Jean Baptiste Say
Nations
Circles
Common
Compare
Political
Measure
Squaring
Mean
Mathematics
Impracticable
Different
Succeed
Wherefore
Like
Wealth
Comparing
Economy
Circle
Impossible
Eras

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Supply creates its own demand.
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The luxury of ostentation affords a much less substantial and solid gratification, than the luxury of comfort, if I may be allowed the expression.
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A nation or an individual, will do wisely to direct consumption chiefly to those articles, that are longest time in wearing out, and the most frequently in use.
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The day will come, sooner or later, when people will wonder at the necessity of taking all this trouble to expose the folly of a system, so childish and absurd, and yet so often enforced at the point of a bayonet.
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The ancients, by their system of colonization, made themselves friends all over the known world the moderns have sought to make subjects, and therefore have made enemies.
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regulation is useful and proper, when aimed at the prevention of fraud or contrivance, manifestly injurious to other kinds of production, or to the public safety, and not at prescribing the nature of the products and the methods of fabrication.
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A shop-keeper in good business is quite as well off as a pedlar that travels the country with his wares on his back. Commercial jealousy is, after all, nothing but prejudice: it is a wild fruit, that will drop of itself when it has arrived at maturity.
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In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.
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A much larger value is consumed in lettuces than in pineapples,throughout Europe at large and the superb shawls of Cachemere are, in France, a very poor object in trade, in comparison with the plain cotton goods of Rouen.
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Some writers maintain arithmetic to be only the only sure guide in political economy for my part, I see so many detestable systems built upon arithmetical statements, that I am rather inclined to regard that science as the instrument of national calamity.
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Taxation being a burthen, must needs weigh lightest on each individual, when it bears upon all alike.
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What would people think of a tradesman, that was to give a ball in his shop, hire performers, and hand refreshments about, with a view to benefit his business?
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It is a melancholy but an undoubted fact, that, even in the most thriving countries, part of the population annually dies of mere want. Not that all who perish from want absolutely die of hunger though this calamity is of more frequent occurrence than is generally supposed.
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No human being has the faculty of originally creating matter, which is more than nature itself can do. But any one may avail himself of the agents offered him by nature, to invest matter with utility.
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The best scheme of finance is, to spend as little as possible and the best tax is always the lightest.
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The love of domination never attains more than a factitious elevation, that is sure to make enemies of all its neighbours.
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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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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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Political economy has only become a science since it has been confined to the results of inductive investigation.
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