Jean-Baptiste Say Quotes

Money is not, properly speaking, one of the subjects of commerce; but only the instrument which men have agreed upon to facilitate the exchange of one commodity for another

Money can be exchanged for goods and services!

Let us sell merchandise to the Spanish and obtain from them gold and silver.

Now, Gold and Silver contribute very little in their own nature to our Lives, for which all Earthly Things seem to have been created. Yet Men, as if they would make Nature asham'd of this, have agreed to make those Metals of equal vaue to all other things, to make 'em the Price and Measrue of all, and the Instruments of changing and exchanging whatever can be found good in this World.

I have made no distinction between the circulation of goods and of money, because there really is none.

Money is the best rule of commerce.

Money was invented for a reason. We've seen people try to use beans, etc. and it doesn't work.

Value denotes a relation reciprocally existing between two objects, and the precise relation which it denotes is the quantity of the one which can be obtained in exchange for a given quantity of the other.

A cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land.

Everyone lives by selling something.

The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists - for us, not mice or wasps - because we go on believing in it.

All money is a matter of belief.

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

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

Countries trade with one another for the same reasons that individuals, businesses, and regions do: to exploit their comparative advantages.

Gold and Silver

Money was of no value whatever. Gold is quite unknown; it is thought to be brass; trade is carried on by barter alone. The people know nothing of money.

The institution of a bank has also a natural relation to the regulation of trade between the States, in so far as it is conducive to the creation of a convenient medium of exchange between them, and to the keeping up a full circulation, by preventing the frequent displacement of the metals in reciprocal remittances Money is the very hinge on which commerce turns. And this does not merely mean gold and silver; many other things have served the purpose, with different degrees of utility. Paper has been extensively employed.

The Practice of most Trading Nations confirms, that Paper is more Qualified for the Use of Money, than Silver; providing it have a Value

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.

When I was a kid, I reckoned things in Hershey bars. Is this worth three Hershey bars to me?

Money is the general medium of exchange. It is the thing for which all other goods are traded, the means of final payment for such goods on the market.

The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.

The inevitable consequence of a depreciated currency must be a rise of prices, usually greater than the actual percentage of depreciation. To meet this situation there came a device possible in no other commercial country. The Government fixed prices at which goods could be sold. This mediaeval device could be enforced only in a land where such State interference had been habitual, and, of course, could give to the notes the fictitious purchasing power only inside the country. After the Christian Science fashion, one had only to believe the notes were of value to make them so; but in the cold world outside German jurisdiction their value would be gauged by the chances of getting gold for them.

By the experience of commercial nations in all ages it has been found that gold and silver afford the only safe foundation for a monetary system.