“The command of a large sum is a dangerous temptation to a national administration. Though accumulated at their expense, the people rarely, if ever profit by it: yet in point of fact, all value, and consequently, all wealth, originates with the people.”

—  Jean-Baptiste Say

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book III, On Consumption, Chapter IX, p. 487

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 "The command of a large sum is a dangerous temptation to a national administration. Though accumulated at their expense,…" by Jean-Baptiste Say?
Jean-Baptiste Say photo
Jean-Baptiste Say72
French economist and businessman 1767–1832

Related quotes

“Political conflict rests to a very large extent on a universal ignorance of consequences, as the people who are benefited by any particular act or policy are rarely those who struggled for it, and the people who are injured are rarely those who opposed it.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, The Economy of Love and Fear, 1973, p. 63

Nicholas Sparks photo

“I think that the point is that people rarely understand that nothing is ever exactly what you think it will be.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Source: The Longest Ride

Christopher Wren photo

“Architecture has its political Use; public Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth…. Architecture aims at Eternity.”

Christopher Wren (1632–1723) English architect

"Of Architecture", Parentalia; or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, comp. by his son Christopher (1750, reprinted 1965), Appendix, p. 351.

“Public administration is a process or a theory, not merely an accumulation of detailed facts. It is Verwaltungslehre.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

The object of administrative study should be to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost both of money and of energy.
Source: "The Study of Administration." 1937, p. 29

George Mason photo

“In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim — that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Remarks on Annual Elections (1775)

Rajiv Gandhi photo

“A responsive administration is tested most at the point of interface between the administration and the people.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

in February 1988, p. 28
Quote, Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi

Frederick Douglass photo

“The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech at the Church of the Puritans, New York City (May 1863)
1860s

“If ever they are put to the test, they shy away, affirming that nationalism is 'practical', cosmopolitanism but a remote ideal. Though they see it intellectually, their hearts are not capable of responding to it. If ever the nation is in danger, their cosmopolitanism evaporates, and they stand for the nation in the good old style. Yet intellectually they know that in their modem world this way leads to disaster.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter V: Origins of the European war

Calvin Coolidge photo

“Excellent poetry, but not a good working philosophy. Goldsmith would have been right, if, in fact, the accumulation of wealth meant the decay of men. It is rare indeed that the men who are accumulating wealth decay. It is only when they cease production, when accumulation stops, that an irreparable decay begins. Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. And there never was a time when wealth was so generally regarded as a means, or so little regarded as an end, as today. Just a little time ago we read in your newspapers that two leaders of American business, whose efforts at accumulation had been most astonishingly successful, had given fifty or sixty million dollars as endowments to educational works. That was real news. It was characteristic of our American experience with men of large resources. They use their power to serve, not themselves and their own families, but the public. I feel sure that the coming generations, which will benefit by those endowments, will not be easily convinced that they have suffered greatly because of these particular accumulations of wealth.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Robert Hunter (author) photo

“I should not be at all surprised if the number of those in poverty in New York, as well as in other large cities and industrial centers, rarely fell below 25 per cent of all the people.”

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

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 26-27
Context: From the facts of distress, as given, and from opinions formed, both as a charity agent and as a Settlement worker, I should not be at all surprised if the number of those in poverty in New York, as well as in other large cities and industrial centers, rarely fell below 25 per cent of all the people.

Related topics