David Hume Quotes

All wealth is the product of labor.

Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.

Capital is a result of labor.

There are some who incline to favor a “minimum wage,” but who “kick at” a “maximum price.” Such surely forget that the capitalist could here just as easily as in the case of a rise in wages compelled by a workmen’s combination, or by any other cause, take his old profits out at the other end by raising the price of the manufactured article.

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

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

Wealth has no source but labor

Labor alone creates and pays the profits of capital.

Fundamentally, where you have an industry in which labor is the primary cost, we can’t compete and probably shouldn’t.

Given that all our lives rest on work that defines us, the business of labor, the wealth that work manifests itself to, I find it odd that not much is written about it. We talk about relationships, damage, adultery, revolution, but we don't talk about work.

Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.

Men cannot not live by exchanging articles, but producing them. They live by work not trade.

Labor is the only means of creating wealth.

If workmen become scarce, the manufacturer gives higher wages, but at first requires an encrease of labour; and this is willingly submitted to by the artisan, who can now eat and drink better, to compensate his additional toil and fatigue.

Business’s objective is to maximize profits—not maximize benefits to the American worker.

Even money has a price.

In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled.

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.

Only with free laborers could farmers enjoy a real sense of security, for slave labor brought only dangers, expense, and troubles: they frequently deserted, and then they have to be punished, as our sentence books, with their many sad examples, bear witness. Two Europeans could do the work of three slaves.

Free trade would place our farmers and workers in competition with peasant and sweated labor products.

When those who do the work own the machines, when those who toil control the invention, then, and not till then, can the world be civilized or free, When these forces shall do the bidding of the individual, when they become the property of the mechanic instead of the monopoly, when they belong to labor instead of what is called capital, when these great powers are as free to the individual laborer as the air and light are now free to all, then, and not until then, the individual will be restored and all forms of slavery will disappear

Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

The division of society into the producing and non-producing classes ... capital and labor.... Antagonism and opposition of interest is introduced in the community; capital and labor stand opposed.