Jean-Baptiste Say Quotes

Whether an instrument shall be regarded as productive capital or not depends entirely on its being used, or not, by some productive labourer…

A peculiarity of capital is that it cannot be employed productively without benefiting the community in which it is used.

It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.

The proportions, too, in which the capital that is to support labour, and the capital that is invested in tools, machinery and buildings, may be variously combined.

Capital does not 'beget profit' as Marx thought. The capital goods as such are dead things that in themselves do not accomplish anything. If they are utilized according to a good idea, profit results. If they are utilized according to a mistaken idea, no profit or losses result. It is the entrepreneurial decision that creates either profit or loss.

America used to be a uniquely productive, low-cost place to do business. We had efficient infrastructure. We had limited regulation. We believed in the market.

Without industry, finance and government consciously and collaboratively ensuring that capital flows to where it is needed in order to ensure the scaling up of climate change solutions, whatever deal is agreed risks never being realised.

There are winners and there are losers. And as much as we would like to help the losers, if we do it in the way that directs the limited capital of the society to support the low-productivity parts of the economy, it means that the rest of the economy - our overall standard of living - will not rise as much as it could.

Empowering innovations require long-term investments, which tie up capital for years and years. So companies are using capital to create more capital, and consequently, the world is awash in capital, but the innovations we need to advance aren't there.

Money is the great tool through whose means labor and skill become universally co-operative.

Who uses funds more productively - private citizens or the government? I dare say that Warren Buffett can use his surplus funds more effectively in private business and creating jobs than the government can.

I would say history is a clear witness to many of the problems that have erupted when two partners from the same industry or same country have come together.

I welcome viagogo's fresh approach to the entertainment industry and I look forward to helping them build more innovative partnerships in the future.

What I have done is to show the importance for the working of the economic system of what may be termed the institutional structure of production.

We could not get NAFTA passed today with the current Congress…. We’ve got to combine trade liberalization with a broad-based sharing of the fruits of our productivity.

As capital is thus the most essential element in setting industry in motion, so it is by the amount of it, that the productiveness of that industry is chiefly determined.

Labour is the father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the mother.

Not only there does not exist, nor can exist, any other revenue than the clear produce of land, but it is the earth also that has furnished all capitals, that form the mass of all the advances of culture and commerce.

The better his [a laborer’s] machinery, and the more readily it can be obtained, the larger will be his production....

The U.K. wants and needs closer trading partnerships with African nations - and Africa needs much more capital.

Cuba is in some ways a perfect trading partner for Minnesota because there's so little overlap between what they are good at and they produce and what Minnesota is good at and what we produce. So it's a natural trading relationship, especially because they're so close.

We won't make the weak stronger by making the strong weaker, as a very wise man once said. That applies to the economy as well. If Germany were less competitive, the euro area as a whole would lose, because less could be produced then.

Wealth in activity--capital with all its friction--is far safer than invested wealth lying dead.

What workers must learn is that the only reason why wage rates are higher in the United States is that the per head quota of capital invested is higher.

I think harmonious relations with the U.S. would be very good for us from the economical point of view, more than in any other field, because all our industry has been established by the U.S. and primary products and repair parts that we have to make with much difficulty or to bring from other areas could come directly. And besides, sugar, which traditionally we had the American market is also near.