“It is very conceivable, that the labor of man alone laid out upon a work, requiring great skill and art to bring it to perfection, may be more productive, in value, than the labour of nature and man combined, when directed towards more simple operations and objects”

Report on Manufactures (1791)

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 "It is very conceivable, that the labor of man alone laid out upon a work, requiring great skill and art to bring it to …" by Alexander Hamilton?
Alexander Hamilton photo
Alexander Hamilton 106
Founding Father of the United States 1757–1804

Related quotes

Wilbur Wright photo
Karl Marx photo

“An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.”

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

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook IV, The Chapter on Capital, p. 308.

Bertrand Russell photo
Novalis photo

“They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Novalis (1829)
Context: When we speak of the aim and Art observable in Shakespeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; that it is, so to speak, self-viewing, self-imitating, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word.

David Hume photo

“It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.”

Part I, Essay 15: The Epicurean
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Context: It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master

Thomas Carlyle photo

“A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Jean-Baptiste Say photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Daniel De Leon photo
Thomas Tredgold photo

“Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.”

Thomas Tredgold (1788–1829) engineer

Thomas Tredgold (1828), used in the Royal Charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) published in: The Times, London, article CS102127326, 30 June 1828.

Related topics