Jean-Baptiste Say (1767 – 1832)
French economist and businessman.
The love of domination never attains more than a factitious elevation, that is sure to make enemies of all its neighbours.
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.
I have made no distinction between the circulation of goods and of money, because there really is none.
With respect to the present time, there are few persons who unite the qualifications of good observers with a situation favourable for accurate observation.
The quantity of money, which is readily parted with to obtain a thing is called its price.
What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the Greeks?
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.
Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!
An uniformity of weights and measures, arranged upon mathematical principles, would be a benefit to the whole commercial world, if it were wise enough to adopt such an expedient.
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.
The theory of interest was wrapped in utter obscurity, until Hume and Smith dispelled the vapor.
The difficulty lies, not in finding a producer, but in finding a consumer.
Taxation being a burthen, must needs weigh lightest on each individual, when it bears upon all alike.
How many other opinions, as universally prevailing and as much respected, will in like manner pass away?
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.
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.
Capital can seldom be made productive, without undergoing several changes both of form and of place, the risk of which is always more or less alarming to persons unaccustomed to the operations of industry; whereas, on the contrary, landed property produces without any change of either quality or position.
One product is always ultimately bought with another, even when paid for in the first instance with money.
Opulent, civilized, and industrious nations, are greater consumers than poor ones, because they are infinitely greater producers.
Nothing is more dangerous in practice, than an obstinate, unbending adherence to a system, particularly in its application to the wants and errors of mankind.