Anne Robert Jacques Turgot Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

Gold and silver are constituted, by the nature of things, money, and universal money, independent of all convention, and of all laws.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
He snatched the lightning shaft from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants.
Inscription for a bust of Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the lightning rod

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
The earth has been cultivated before it has been divided; the cultivation itself having been the only motive for a division, and for that law which secures to every one his property. For the first persons who have employed themselves in cultivation, have probably worked as much land as their strength would permit, and, consequently, more than was necessary for their own nourishment.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
All merchandize has the two essential properties of money, to measure and to represent all value: and in this sense all merchandize is money.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
All is more or less proper to serve as a common measure, in proportion as it is more or less in general use, of a more similar quality, and more easy to be divided into aliquot parts. All is more or less applicable for the purpose of a general pledge of exchange, in proportion as it is less susceptible of decay or alteration in quantity or quality.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
They [the Americans] are the hope of this world. They may become its model.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
If the land was divided among all the inhabitants of a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more; it is evident that all of them being equal, no one would work for another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith to pay another for his labour, for each person having only such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and would not have any thing to give in exchange for the labour of others.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
Everywhere the strong have made the laws and oppressed the weak; and, if they have sometimes consulted the interests of society, they have always forgotten those of humanity.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot