David Ricardo Quotes

Every thing receives a value from its use, and the Value is raised [or lowered], according to its Quality, Quantity and Demand.

Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.

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

In stating the principles which regulate exchangeable value and price, we should carefully distinguish between those variations which belong to the commodity itself, and those which are occasioned by a variation in the medium in which value is estimated, or price expressed.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth.

But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.

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.

Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.

The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.

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

Money is a way of creating scarcity.

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

Economics is everywhere, and understanding economics can help you make better decisions and lead a happier life.

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.

Things are worth what they will fetch at a sale.

Most economic fallacies derive … from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

Economics is built on the assumption of scarcity. Therefore, it deals with values and calculations. It cannot seek the good that fits a specific person within a given human condition. Where scarcity rules, ethics is reduced to numbers and utility. Further, the person engaged in the manipulation of mathematical formulas loses his or her ear for ethical nuance; one becomes morally deaf.

A smaller and smaller area of land will be able to produce commodities of greater use or higher value

The dictates of economics, that "dismal science," limit the benefits of medical science

Economics is not about goods and services; it is about human choice and action.

The fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited

Economics has revealed a great truth about the natural law of human interaction: that not only is production essential to man's prosperity and survival, but so also is exchange.

Economics is a choice between alternatives all the time. Those are the trade-offs.

When will you learn that the time to buy a thing is when you find what you want? If you go back the next year and try to get more, they will try to sell you something else.