Jean-Baptiste Say Quotes

75 Sourced Quotes

One product is always ultimately bought with another, even when paid for in the first instance with money.

Jean-Baptiste Say
A tax can never be favorable to the public welfare, except by the good use that is made of its proceeds.

Jean-Baptiste Say
A treasure does not always contribute to the political security of its possessors. It rather invites attack, and very seldom is faithfully applied to the purpose for which it was destined.

Jean-Baptiste Say
I have made no distinction between the circulation of goods and of money, because there really is none.

Jean-Baptiste Say
How many other opinions, as universally prevailing and as much respected, will in like manner pass away?

Jean-Baptiste Say
The wants of mankind are supplied and satisfied out of the gross values produced and created, and not out of the net values only.

Jean-Baptiste Say
When war becomes a trade, it benefits, like all other trades, from the division of labour.

Jean-Baptiste Say
It is doubtless very desirable, that private persons should have a correct knowledge of their personal interests; but it must be infinitely more so, that governments should possess that knowledge.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Law has been unjustly charged with the whole blame of the calamities resulting from the scheme that bears his name.

Jean-Baptiste Say
All those who, since Adam Smith, have turned their attention to Political Economy, agree that in reality we do not buy articles of consumption with money, the circulating medium with which we pay for them. We must in the first instance have bought this money itself by the sale of our produce.

Jean-Baptiste Say
If one individual, or one class, can call in the aid of authority to ward off the effects of competition, it acquires a privilege and at the cost of the whole community; it can make sure of profits not altogether due to the productive services rendered, but composed in part of an actual tax upon consumers for its private profit' which tax it commonly shares with the authority that thus unjustly lent its support.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Dominion by land or sea will appear equally destitute of attraction, when it comes to be generally understood, that all its advantages rest with the rulers, and that the subjects at large derive no benefit whatever.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!

Jean-Baptiste Say
The wealthy are generally impressed with an idea, that they shall never stand in need of public charitable relief; but a little less confidence would become them better.

Jean-Baptiste Say
When a tree, a natural product, is felled, is society put into possession of no greater produce than that of the mere labour of the woodman?

Jean-Baptiste Say
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.

Jean-Baptiste Say
The government has, in all countries, a vast influence, in determining the character of the national consumption; not only because it absolutely directs the consumption of the state itself, but because a great proportion of the consumption of individuals is gained by its will and example.

Jean-Baptiste Say
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.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Every individual, from the common mechanic, that works in wood or clay, to the prime minister that regulates with the dash of his pen the agriculture, the breeding of cattle, the mining, or the commerce of a nation, will perform his business the better, the better he understands the nature of things, and the more his understanding is enlightened.

Jean-Baptiste Say
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.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Freedoms and apprenticeships are likewise expedients of police, not of that wholesome branch of police, whose object is the maintenance of the public and private security, and which is neither costly nor vexatious; but of that sort of police which bad governments employ to preserve or extend their personal authority at any expense.

Jean-Baptiste Say
It is production which opens a demand for products.... A product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value.

Jean-Baptiste Say
The United States will have the honour of proving experimentally, that true policy goes hand in hand with moderation and humanity.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Valuation is vague and arbitrary, when there is no assurance that it will be generally acquiesced in by others.

Jean-Baptiste Say
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.

Jean-Baptiste Say
A man who applies his labour to the investing of objects with value by the creation of utility of some sort, can not expect such a value to be appreciated and paid for, unless where other men have the means of purchasing it. Now, of what do these means consist? Of other values of other products, likewise the fruits of industry, capital, and land. Which leads us to a conclusion that may at first appear paradoxical, namely, that it is production which opens a demand for products.

Jean-Baptiste Say
The sea and wind can at the same time convey my neighbour's vessel and my own.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Capital must work, as it were, in concert with industry; and this concurrence is what I call the productive agency of capital.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Opulent, civilized, and industrious nations, are greater consumers than poor ones, because they are infinitely greater producers.

Jean-Baptiste Say
Demand and supply are the opposite extremes of the beam, whence depend the scales of dearness and cheapness; the price is the point of equilibrium, where the momentum of the one ceases, and that of the other begins.

Jean-Baptiste Say