“Businesses owned by responsible and organized merchants shall eventually surpass those owned by wealthy rulers.”

—  Ibn Khaldun, book Muqaddimah

Muqaddimah, 2:272–73 quoted in Weiss (1995) p 30
Muqaddimah (1377)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Businesses owned by responsible and organized merchants shall eventually surpass those owned by wealthy rulers." by Ibn Khaldun?
Ibn Khaldun photo
Ibn Khaldun14
Arab historiographer and historian 1332–1406

Related quotes

Paul Krugman photo

“The world is full of self-organizing systems, systems that form structures not merely in response to inputs from outside but also, indeed primarily, in response to their own internal logic. Global weather is a self-organizing system; so, surely, is the global economy.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Source: The Self-Organizing Economy (1996), Chapter 9. Concluding Thoughts

“My career as a teacher, researcher, and consultant has been focused on the education of practicing executives to direct their attention to the need for defining the purposes of their own lives and those of their organizations, and to the fact that such purposes should be worth pursuing in terms of profit outcomes and social responsibility.”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Kenneth Andrews, quoted in: Harper W. Moulton. "Profiles in executive education: Ken Andrews." Business Horizons, Vol. 38, Issue 5, Sept.–Oct. 1995, pp. 75-78
Quote

Thomas the Apostle photo

“Your rulers and your dignitaries are those who are clad in plush garments, and they shall not be able to recognize the truth.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

78
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“4537. The Fool is busy in everyone's Business but his own.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Albert Jay Nock photo

“The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization of the political means.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 59
Context: There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means. The primitive exercise of the political means was, as we have seen, by conquest, confiscation, expropriation, and the introduction of a slave-economy. The conqueror parcelled out the conquered territory among beneficiaries, who thenceforth satisfied their needs and desires by exploiting the labour of the enslaved inhabitants. The feudal State, and the merchant-State, wherever found, merely took over and developed successively the heritage of character, intention and apparatus of exploitation which the primitive State transmitted to them; they are in essence merely higher integrations of the primitive State.
The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization of the political means. Now, since man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion, he will employ the political means whenever he can – exclusively, if possible; otherwise, in association with the economic means.

Philippe Starck photo

“You must have your own responsibility, your own consciousness.”

Philippe Starck (1949) French architect and industrial designer

Starck (2007) "Starck speaks: Politics, Pleasure and Play" in: The New Architectural Pragmatism William S. Saunders ed. p. 36

Robert Hunter (author) photo

“He [Tolstoy] could see little good in the clergy, while he utterly condemned the military, the rulers of the earth, the judges, the capitalists, the landlords, the merchants, the jailers, the functionaries. He assailed modern art and classed artists with scientists and ministers as the lackeys of a degenerate and parasitic class of wealthy men. Political economists he considered as retainers of the same class and their product as the throwing of dust in the eyes of those who seek for a way out of our unhappy social conditions.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 77

Anaïs Nin photo

“I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

David Hume photo

“Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 4: Of The First Principles of Government
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Context: Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

Related topics