Commodity Quotes - Page 19

• Fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.

  Max Brooks

  World War Z, Valuable, Universe

  Max Brooks (2006). “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War”, p.55, Broadway Books

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• Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a relation between people.

  Vladimir Lenin

  People, Saws, Relation

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• Freedom is such a precious commodity. Yet sometimes the freest of people devalue it the most.

  Ward Connerly

  People, Liberty, Sometimes

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• Sisterhood is powerful. Woman can support each other as women, in their pursuit for enlightenment or anything else, without fear. But as long as she's still in the commodities exchange market, buying and selling, she must fear the competition.

  Frederick Lenz

  Powerful, Women, Sisterhood

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• It is terrifying to think of what a commodity art has become.

  Audrey Flack

  Art, Thinking, Commerce

  Audrey Flack (1986). “Art & soul: notes on creating”, Dutton Adult

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• If success in selling is my primary interest, I am not primarily a writer, but a salesperson. If I teach success in selling as the writer's primary objective, I am not teaching writing; I'm teaching, or pretending to teach, the production and marketing of a commodity.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Teaching, Writing, Marketing

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.253, Shambhala Publications

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• When not only gold but all commodities are available for the redemption of the paper currency, its volume is limited only by the value of all the wealth of the country, and it can never become insecure up to this limit.

  John Buchanan Robinson

  Country, Insecure, Gold

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• If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.

  Thomas Malthus

  Country, Class, Causes

  "Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application". Book by Thomas Malthus, Book II, Chapter I, "On The Progress of Wealth", Section X, p. 414, 1836.

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• 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.

  Thomas Malthus

  Class, Air, Appearance

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1836). “Principles of Political Economy: Considered with a View to Their Practical Application”, p.88

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• The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

  Jurgen Habermas

  People, Together, May

  "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)". Book by Jurgen Habermas translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, 1989.

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• By a commodity we shall understand any object, substance, action or service, which can afford pleasure or ward off pain.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Pain, Substance, Action

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• The point of equilibrium will be known by the criterion that an infinitely small amount of commodity exchanged in addition, at the same rate, will bring neither gain nor loss of utility.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Loss, Gains, Criteria

  1871 The Theory of Political Economy.

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• One of the most important axioms is, that as the quantity of any commodity, for instance, plain food, which a man has to consume, increases, so the utility or benefit derived from the last portion used decreases in degree. The decrease in enjoyment between the beginning and the end of a meal may be taken as an example.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Taken, Men, Important

  William Stanley Jevons (1973). “Papers and correspondence of William Stanley Jevons”

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• Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Real, Men, Essence

  Herbert Marcuse (2007). “The Essential Marcuse: Selected Writings of Philosopher and Social Critic Herbert Marcuse”, p.78, Beacon Press

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• Technical progress and more comfortable living permit the systematic inclusion of libidinal components into the realm of commodity production and exchange. But no matter how controlled the mobilization of instinctual energy may be (it sometimes amounts to a scientific management of libido), no matter how much it may serve as a prop for the status quo - it is also gratifying to the managed individuals, just as racing the outboard motor, pushing the power lawn mower, and speeding the automobile are fun.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Fun, Racing, Progress

  "One-Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse, (p. 75), 1964.

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• As a matter of fact, capitalist economy is not and cannot be stationary. Nor is it merely expanding in a steady manner. It is incessantly being revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial structure as it exists at any moment.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Opportunity, Capitalist Economy, Matter

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.31, Routledge

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• We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility; but there is one high poetic fancy in the New Atlantis that stays in the mind after all its fancies and inventions have been forgotten. In the New Atlantis, an island kingdom lying in very distant seas, the only commodity of external trade is light: Bacon's own special light, the light of understanding.

  Peter Medawar

  Lying, Sea, Islands

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• The best taxes are such as are levied upon consumptions, especially those of luxury; because such taxes are least felt by the people. They seem, in some measure, voluntary; since a man may choose how far he will use the commodity: They naturally produce sobriety and frugality, if judiciously imposed: And being confounded with the natural price of the commodity, they are scarcely perceived by the consumers. Their only disadvantage is that they are expensive in the levying.

  David Hume

  Men, Luxury, People

  David Hume (1826). “The philosophical works of David Hume”, p.387

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• Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Gold, May, Matter

  Thomas Hobbes (2010). “Leviathan - Revised Edition”, p.222, Broadview Press

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• Liberated souls are a rare commodity in this world. They are no better; it's just you, a little later, in the next act or in the next play.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Play, Soul

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• Water is a commodity not by any means to be found everywhere...When found, it is more than likely to be bad, being either from a bitter alkaline pool, or from a hole in a creek, so muddy that it can only be called liquid by courtesy.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Mean, Water, Liquid

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• Warmth, kindness, and friendship are the most yearned for commodities in the world. The person who can provide them will never be lonely.

  Ann Landers

  Lonely, Kindness, Thoughtful

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• We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability-relentl ess effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Skills, Effort, Way

  "How David Beats Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2009.

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• Tough times helped many commodities traders become lean and mean through consolidation, mergers and cost cutting. All that excess supply has been sopped up.

  Jim Rogers

  Mean, Cutting, Tough Times

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• Uniqueness is the commodity of glut.

  Matt Ridley

  Uniqueness

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