David Ricardo Quotes

LABOUR, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, on with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.

Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.

The theory that if wages go up, employment goes down isn't a physical law like F=MA. It's a moral law, like 'Bedtime is 9:00 P.M.'

It has been shown that, in contrast to everything which classical national economy has hitherto taught, not the producer but the consumer is the ruling factor in economic life.

Supply and demand don’t work on a legislative schedule.

The law of supply and demand holds eternal.

When it comes to jobs, jobs are just like products in the sense that the free market operates and sees that somebody gets paid what they're worth.

The supply price and the demand price should be roughly the same. You're not supposed to have two different prices. According to economists.

The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly.

We might as well reasonably dispute whether it is the upper or the under blade of a pair of scissors that cuts a piece of paper, as whether value is governed by demand or supply.

Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.

Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price.

Markets are the best way to allocate resources.

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.

Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.

I'm not an expert in it, but it seems to me that you have to let the market forces go their course.

In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought.

Two hundred years ago the first liberal economist, Adam Smith, warned businessmen that they could absorb only a certain amount of rigidity. In the easy days after World War II... wage rises could be financed out of inflationary price increases.

Falling prices through increased production is a wonderful long-run tendency of untrammeled capitalism.

In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.

The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point.

If a rise in wages does not raise prices, a fall will not reduce them.

We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.

For 99 issues out of 100 we could say that at some price they are cheap enough to buy and at some price they would be so dear that they would be sold.

Agriculture is one economic activity that does not obey the laws of demand and supply.