David Ricardo Quotes

• The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

• It is not to be understood that the natural price of labour, estimated even in food and necessaries, is absolutely fixed and constant. It varies at different times in the same country and very materially differs in different countries. It essentially depends on the habits and customs of the people.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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

  Topics in Money

  Tags in Profits

• 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

  Topics in Money

• After all the fertile land in the immediate neighbourhood of the first settlers were cultivated, if capital and population increased, more food would be required, and it could only be procured from land not so advantageously situated.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Neighbour

• Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Manufacturers

• As the revenue of the farmer is realized in raw produce, or in the value of raw produce, he is interested, as well as the landlord, in its high exchangeable value, but a low price of produce may be compensated to him by a great additional quantity.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Great

• But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Produced

• By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour; and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Country

  Tags in Good

• During the period of capital moving from one employment to another, the profits on that to which capital is flowing will be relatively high, but will continue so no longer than till the requisite capital is obtained.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Profits

• Gold and silver are no doubt subject to fluctuations, from the discovery of new and more abundant mines; but such discoveries are rare, and their effects, though powerful, are limited to periods of comparatively short duration.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Power

• Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Gold

• Gold, on the contrary, though of little use compared with air or water, will exchange for a great quantity of other goods.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Quantity

• If a commodity were in no way useful, – in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, – it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Gratification

• If the demand for home commodities should be diminished, because of the fall of rent on the part of the landlords, it will be increased in a far greater degree by the increased opulence of the commercial classes.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Greater

• If the quantity of labour realized in commodities, regulate their exchangeable value, every increase of the quantity of labour must augment the value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as every diminution must lower it

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Quantity

• If then the prosperity of the commercial classes, will most certainly lead to accumulation of capital, and the encouragement of productive industry; these can by no means be so surely obtained as by a fall in the price of corn.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Encouragement

• If we were left to ourselves, unfettered by legislative enactments, we should gradually withdraw our capital from the cultivation of such lands, and import the produce which is at present raised upon them.

  David Ricardo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cultivation

David Ricardo (62)

Birth:	18th April, 1772
Death:	11th September, 1823
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Economist

About

David Ricardo was born in London. He was a British political economist, stock trader, and author. He was often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill.

Related Authors

• Paul Sweeney
• Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
• Sir Henry Roy Forbes Harrod
• Thomas Robert Malthus
• Beatrice Webb
• Glenn Hubbard
• John Robert Hewson
• Lucas Papademos
• Daniel Kahneman
• Alfred Marshall

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st April

Births

• 1909 - Rollo May
• 1950 - Tony Danza
• 1959 - Robert Smith
• 1864 - Max Weber
• 1935 - Thomas H. Kean

Deaths

• 2012 - Russell Green
• 2003 - Nina Simone
• 1948 - Aldo Leopold
• 2000 - Al Purdy
• 1924 - Marie Corelli