David Ricardo - Money Quotes

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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.

David Ricardo
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.

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

David Ricardo
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.

David Ricardo
To alter the money value of commodities, by altering the value of money, and yet to raise the same money amount by taxes, is then undoubtedly to increase the burthens of society.

David Ricardo
Whenever the current of money is forcibly stopped, and when money is prevented from settling at its just level, there are no limits to the possible variations of the exchange.

David Ricardo
I have endeavoured to show that the ability to pay taxes depends, not on the gross money value of the mass of commodities, nor on the net money value of the revenue of capitalists and landlords, but on the money value of each man's revenue compared to the money value of the commodities which he usually consumes.

David Ricardo
The variation in the value of money, however great, makes no difference in the rate of profits;...

David Ricardo
It has therefore been justly observed that however honestly the coin of a country may conform to its standard, money made of gold and silver is still liable to fluctuations in value, not only to accidental, and temporary, but to permanent and natural variations, in the same manner as other commodities.

David Ricardo
If I have to hire a labourer for a week, and instead of ten shillings I pay him eight, no variation having taken place in the value of money, the labourer can probably obtain more food and necessaries with his eight shillings than he before obtained for ten: but this is owing, not to a rise in the real value of his wages, as stated by Adam Smith, and more recently by Mr. Malthus, but to a fall in the value of the things on which his wages are expended, things perfectly distinct; and yet for calling this a fall in the real value of wages, I am told that I adopt new and unusual language, not reconcilable with the true principals of the science. To me it appears that the unusual and, indeed, inconsistent language is that used by my opponents.

David Ricardo
If English money was of the same value then as before, Hamburgh money must have risen in value. But where is the proof of this?

David Ricardo
The demand for money is regulated entirely by its value, and its value by its quantity.

David Ricardo
Experience, however, shows that neither a state nor a bank ever have [sic] had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power; in all states, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes either in gold coin or bullion.

David Ricardo