“The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, … since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.
There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.”

— Paul Valéry

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), p. 166

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, … since before bartering things one must barter …" by Paul Valéry?

Paul Valéry 89

French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871–1945

Related quotes

“There is nothing does more endanger the loss of commerce with the Indians than want of truck to barter with them.”

Leonard Calvert (1606–1647) First governor of Maryland colony

Cited by Bernard C. Steiner in " Beginnings of the Provincial Trade https://books.google.com/books?id=-WNAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA40," in Beginnings of Maryland 1631–1639 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1903), p. 40.

“Friendship craves
The commerce of the mind, not the exchange
Of emulous feasts that foster sycophants.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Savonarola (1881), Lorenzo de' Medici in Act I, sc. i; pp. 6–7.

“The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article of commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Source: The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003), p. 104

“A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Discours d'ouverture, congrès de la paix http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Congr%C3%A8s_de_la_Paix_1849, [Opening address, Peace Congress], Paris (21 August 1849); published in Actes et paroles - Avant l'exil (1875)
Context: A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.
A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!
A day will come when we shall see those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, facing one another, stretching out their hands across the sea, exchanging their products, their arts, their works of genius, clearing up the globe, making deserts fruitful, ameliorating creation under the eyes of the Creator, and joining together, to reap the well-being of all, these two infinite forces, the fraternity of men and the power of God.

“The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men and to be found in no other race of animals”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

“Capitalist production does not exist at all without foreign commerce.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 474 (See also...David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ch. VII, p. 81).
(Buch II) (1893)

“Commerce creates wealth, and it is the foundation of the great state. Armies are raised and paid for to win, or to protect the countries' trade, or commerce. Ships are constructed, colonies established, inventions encouraged, governments built up, or pulled down, for Commerce. Commerce cuts the way, and all professions, all arts follow.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

“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 book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto (1848) Section 1, Paragraph 30

“Commerce unites men and make them; therefore it is fatal to despotic power.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon's War Maxims: With His Social and Political Thoughts (1804-15), Gale & Polden, (1899) p. 150

“All exchange stimulates productive activity, whether exchange by gift, gambling, barter, or money transaction.”

Aaron C. Brown (1956) American financial analyst

Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 5, Pokernomics, p. 127

“The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, … since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Paul Valéry 89

Related quotes

Related topics

“The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, … since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.
There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.”