David Ricardo Quotes

It is here we come to the heart of the matter. The economic principle of comparative advantage', 'a country may, in return for manufactured commodities, import corn even if it can be grown with less labour than in the country from which it is imported

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.

The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.

Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of themarket, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.

Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

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

Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils.

Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.

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

No extension of foreign trade will immediately increase the amount of value in a country, although it will very powerfully contribute to increase the mass of commodities and therefore the sum of enjoyments.

The interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interests of every other class in the community.

Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold... has its natural and its market price.

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.

The exchangeable value of all commodities rises as the difficulties of their production increase.

The wheat bought by a farmer to sow is comparatively a fixed capital to the wheat purchased by a baker to make into loaves.

Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.

There can be no greater error then in supposing that capital is increased by non-consumption.

If a tax on malt would raise the price of beer, a tax on bread must raise the price of bread.

The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it.

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.

Every transaction in commerce is an independent transaction.

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.

Rent is the portion of the earth, which is paid to the landlord for the user of the original and indestructible powers of the soil