Commodity Quotes - Page 10

• Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

  Samuel Johnson

  Judging, Hateful, Common

  A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

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• Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail. That is what we have done at one time or another to produce surpluses of wheat, of sugar, of butter, of many other commodities. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, May, Want

  Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman (1990). “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement”, p.237, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it - I say it isn't news.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Radio News, Care, Acceptable

  Radio-Television News Directors Association Convention Address, delivered 15 October 1958, Chicago, Illinois

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• But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.

  David Ricardo

  Wages, Machinery, Consumed

  David Ricardo, John Ramsay McCulloch (1852). “The Works of David Ricardo. With a notice of the life and writings of the author: by J. R. McCulloch”, p.26

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• Writers in a profit making economy are an exploitable commodity whose works are products to be marketed, and are so judged and handled.

  Tillie Olsen

  Economy, Profit, Products

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.170, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• All life worth living is difficult, nobody promised us happiness; it is not a commodity you have earned, or shall ever earn. It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the season we hoped for, or as the result of our planning for it.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Brave, Planning, Form

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.204, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• Any high school boy or girl knows how to calculate the force with which a stone he or she throws will hit someone in the face, but nothing in those equations they use will tell them whether or not to throw it...To solve the problem of values we must know what is valuable. Consciousness is the most valuable commodity...To bring values into science, we need to connect science with what is valuable consciousness.

  Ravi Gomatam

  Girl, School, Boys

  Interview with Thomas Beardy, Clarion Call magazine (Clarion University's newspaper), 1990.

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• Civilization is a perishable commodity.

  Helen Clark MacInnes

  Civilization

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• I have that precious commodity - freedom. I can live my life a day at a time, and I am open to whatever the next day brings. I know I sound as if I have been off with some guru in India, but I haven't. I've come to realise the value of being able to decide for oneself.

  Cherie Lunghi

  Next Day, Sound, India

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• Advice is a peculiar commodity. Those who have the capacity to give good advice generally have too much sense to waste their time trying to get rid of it.

  William H. McMaster

  Giving, Advice, Trying

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• We don't know what energy is, any more than we know what information is, but as a now robust scientific concept we can describe it in precise mathematical terms, and as a commodity we can measure, market, regulate and tax it.

  Hans Christian von Baeyer

  Energy, Information, Robust

  Hans Christian Von Baeyer (2004). “Information: The New Language of Science”, p.11, Harvard University Press

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• What people today call inflation is not inflation, i.e., the increase in the quantity of money and money substitutes, but the general rise in commodity prices and wage rates which is the inevitable consequence of inflation.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Commodity Prices, People, Investing

  Ludwig Von Mises (1974). “Planning for freedom, and twelve other essays and addresses”

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• Freedom has become a commodity whose availability, paradoxically, keeps society in check. The threat of its loss seems to enable us to tolerate its imposition.

  Andrzej Stasiuk

  Loss, Availability, Checks

  Andrzej Stasiuk (2009). “Fado”

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• When there is a world scarcity of any commodity, whether it's food or free speech, then the whole world must go on rations in order that eventually the whole world may have it again in plenty.

  Jan Struther

  Order, Speech, Scarcity

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• If a commodity were in no way useful, - in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, - it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.

  David Ricardo

  Way, Would Be, Might

  David Ricardo (1817). “On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation”, p.2

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• The reductionist measure of yield is to agriculture systems, what GDP is to economic systems. It is time to move from measuring yield of commodities, to health and well-being of ecosystems and communities. Industrial agriculture has its roots in war. Ecological agriculture allows us to make peace with the earth, soil and the society.

  Vandana Shiva

  War, Moving, Yield

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• In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

  Karl Marx

  Class, Long, Competition

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.251, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Bitcoin isn't tied to any commodity - besides trust.

  Paul Ford

  Bitcoin, Tied

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• Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.

  John Dewey

  Teaching, May, Selling

  John Dewey (1986). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1933”, p.140, SIU Press

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• Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

  Stephen King

  Work, Cutting, Successful

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

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• The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. ... Obscenity is too valuable a commodity to chuck around all over the place; it should be taken out of the safe on special occasions only.

  Dorothy Parker

  Beautiful, Taken, Thinking

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• There is, as every schoolboy knows in this scientific age, a very close chemical relation between coal and diamonds. It is the reason, I believe, why some people allude to coal as "black diamonds." Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property.

  Joseph Conrad

  Book, Believe, People

  Joseph Conrad (2016). “Victory”, Joseph Conrad

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• Once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and restrict his cash holdings to minimum size... If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns to crack-up boom: the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Real, Public Opinion, Cracks

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• If the demand for home commodities should be diminished, because of the fall of rent on the part of the landlords, it will be increased in a far greater degree by the increased opulence of the commercial classes.

  David Ricardo

  Fall, Home, Class

  David Ricardo, John Ramsay McCulloch (1852). “The Works of David Ricardo. With a notice of the life and writings of the author: by J. R. McCulloch”, p.387

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• In the rush to industrialize farming, we've lost the understanding, implicit since the beginning of agriculture, that food is a process, a web of relationships, not an individual ingredient or commodity.

  Dan Barber

  Agriculture, Understanding, Ingredients

  Dan Barber (2014). “The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food”, p.120, Penguin

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