“Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things.”

— Adam Smith

It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.
Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter V, p. 38.

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 "Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things." by Adam Smith?

Adam Smith 175

Scottish moral philosopher and political economist 1723–1790

Related quotes

“LABOUR, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, on with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter V, On Wages, p. 52

“Every thing in the world is purchased by labour.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part II, Essay 1: Of Commerce
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

“Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

“Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, as quoted in The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America (1998), p. 92

“Liberty is more precious than money or office; and we should be vigilant lest we purchase wealth or place at the price of inner freedom.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 77

“[Inventory is measured by] the money the system invests in purchasing things the system intends to sell.”

Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1947–2011) Israeli physicist and management guru

Source: The Haystack Syndrome (1990), p. 23; as cited by: Gerald P. Marquis (2011, p. 10)

“Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.”
Caritas non potest conparari; dilectio pretium non habet.

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

Letter 3
Letters

“There was a price to be paid for any decision he made. There was a price for who he was. Other people paid it.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Rand al'Thor
(15 October 1994)

“The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion… and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself - ultimate cost for perfect value.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

“The time of Christians is the price with which they purchase eternity.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: An Essay on Old Age, 1732, p. 121

“Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Adam Smith 175

Related quotes

Related topics