Quotes about trade
page 9

George Mason photo

“As much as I value a union of all the states, I would not admit the southern states into the union, unless they agreed to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade because it would bring weakness and not strength to the union.”

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

June 17
Addresses to the Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788)

George W. Bush photo

“The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral. Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Distinctly American Internationalism (November 1999)

Ken Livingstone photo
Ami Chandra photo

“Pandit Ami Chandra was Fiji's most distinguished Indian trade unionist, possessing high intelligence and a quiet but convincing personality. He strongly opposed any participation of the trade unions in politics; and he also used his powers of gentle persuation to bring about multi-racial trade unionism.”

Ami Chandra (1900–1954) Fijian politician

Industrial associations and local politics. http://books.google.com/books?id=Z2R3Nk3jUlsC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=%22ami+chandra%22&source=web&ots=bw5YhLOo35&sig=vBCbwbF8o-07nOYlvYnRNu4tDis#PPA9,M1.

Calvin Coolidge photo
Satoru Iwata photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Benjamin Rush photo
David Cameron photo

“Britain is a special country. We have so many great advantages: a Parliamentary democracy where we resolve great issues about our future through peaceful debate; a great trading nation, with our science and arts, our engineering and our creativity, respected the world over. And while we are not perfect, I do believe we can be a model for the multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, where people can come and make a contribution and rise to the very highest that their talent allows.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech delivered outside outside 10 Downing Street, announcing that he would resign as prime minister after British voters chose to leave the European Union in a referendum (June 24, 2016), see David Cameron's resignation speech in full http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/24/europe/david-cameron-full-resignation-speech/ (published by CNN)
2010s, 2016

Hubert H. Humphrey photo
Hubert H. Humphrey photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Ma Ying-jeou photo

“We have no reason to be pessimistic about the (cross-strait service trade) agreement or to be afraid of its impact. The government will try its best to minimize possible damage and maximize the business opportunities the agreement can create.”

Ma Ying-jeou (1950) Taiwanese politician, president of the Republic of China

Ma Ying-jeou (2013) cited in: " Trade pact failure would hurt our reputation: Ma http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2013/07/04/2003566313" in The Taipei Times, 4 July 2013.
Statement made in Taichung in commenting on the recently signed cross-strait service trade agreement between ARATS and SEF in Shanghai, 3 July 2013.
Other topics

W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“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

Roberto Clemente photo
Camille Pissarro photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“3051. Jack of all Trades is of no Trade.”

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

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

“I was an apprentice to a linnen-draper when this king was born, and continued at the trade some years, but the shop being too narrow and short for my large mind, I took leave of my master, but said nothing. Then I lived a country-life for some years; and in the late wars I was a soldier, and sometimes had the honour and misfortune to lodg and dislodg an army. In the year 1G52, I entred upon iron works, and pli'd them several years, and in them times I made it my business to survey the three great rivers of England, and some small ones; and made two navigable, and a third almost compleated. I next studied the great weakness of the rye-lands, and the surfeit it was then under by reason of their long tillage. I did by practick and theorick find out the reason of its defection, as also of its recovery, and applyed the remedy in putting out two books, which were so fitted to the country-man's capacity, that he fell on pell-mell; and I hope, and partly know, that great part of Worcestershire, Glocestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, have doubled the value of the land by the husbandry discovered to them; see my two books printed by Mr Sawbridg on Ludgate Hill, entitled, Yarranton's Improvement ly Clover, and there thou mayest be further satisfied.* I also for many years served the countreys with the seed, and at last gave them the knowledg of getting it with ease and small trouble; and what I have been doing since, my book tells you at large.”

Andrew Yarranton (1619–1684) English civil engineer

Source: Quotes from England's Improvement, (1677), p. 193; cited in Patrick Edward Dove (1854, p. 405-6)

Tony Benn photo

“The [pay] policy is principally designed to hold down wages rather than to check inflation. Inflation is being used as an excuse to destroy free trade union bargaining.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in the House of Commons (7 November 1973) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/nov/07/price-and-pay-code
1970s

Nicholas Sparks photo
David Silverman photo

“The World Trade Center cross has become a Christian icon. It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their God, who couldn't be bothered to stop the terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross.”

David Silverman (1957) American animator and director

2011-08-04
Culture War Update - The Dividening of America - American Atheists vs. Ground Zero Cross
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Television
Comedy Central
Comedy Central
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-4-2011/culture-war-update---the-dividening-of-america---american-atheists-vs--the-ground-zero-cross

“The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state.”

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

Kenneth Boulding, quoted in Dixy Lee Ray (1990). "Trashing the Planet", p. 168. Regnery Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0895265449.
1990s and attributed

Gene Wolfe photo

“She often spoke of marryin' a butcher or a sausage maker, having a liking for those trades, as she said, for they knew you couldn't never get all the stains from their aprons, and didn't demand it.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"Our Neighbor by David Copperfield", Future Tense (1978), ed. Lee Harding, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Endangered Species (1989)
Fiction

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV photo

“Here, in India, the problem is peculiar. Our trade tends steadily to expand and it is possible to demonstrate by means of statistics the increasing prosperity of the country generally. On the other hand, we in India know that the ancient handicrafts are decaying, that the fabrics for which India was renowned in the past are supplanted by the products of Western looms, and that our industries are not displaying that renewed vitality which will enable them to compete successfully in the home or the foreign market. The cutivator on the margin of subsistence remains a starveling cultivator, the educated man seeks Government employment or the readily available profession of a lawyer, while the belated artisan works on the lines marked out for him by his forefathers for a return that barely keeps body and soul together. It is said that India is dependent on agriculture and must always remain so. That may be so; but there can, I venture to think, be little doubt that the solution of the ever recurring famine problem is to be found not merely in the improvement of agriculture, the cheapening of loans, or the more equitable distribution of taxation, but still more in the removal from the land to industrial pursuits of a great portion of those, who, at the best, gain but a miserable subsistence, and on the slightest failure of the season are thrown on public charity. It is time for us in India to be up and doing; new markets must be found, new methods adopted and new handicrafts developed, whilst the educated unemployed, no less than the skilled and unskilled labourers, all those, in fact, whose precarious means of livelihood is a standing menace to the well-being of the State must find employment in reorganised and progressive industries It seems to me that what we want is more outside light and assistance from those interested in industries. Our schools should not be left entirely to officials who are either fully occupied with their other duties or whose ideas are prone, in the nature of things, to run in official grooves. I should like to see all those who "think" and “know" giving us their active assistance and not merely their criticism of our results. It is not Governments or forms of Government that have made the great industrial nations, but the spirit of the people and the energy of one and all working to a common end.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

On the occasion of the opening of Industrial and Arts Exhibition on 26 December 1903 in Madras (now known as Chennai) Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 203 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt,
As ruler of the state

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Essay on Mitford's History of Greece (1824)

Jeff Flake photo
David Lloyd George photo

“Free Trade is a great pacificator. We have had many quarrels, many causes of quarrels, during the last fifty years, but we have not had a single war with any first-class Power. Free Trade is slowly but surely cleaving a path through the dense and dark thicket of armaments to the sunny land of brotherhood amongst nations.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Manchester (21 April 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 43.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Ilana Mercer photo
Norman Tebbit photo
Rose Wilder Lane photo
Neil Young photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
William Morley Punshon photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Paul Simon photo

“In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving."”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

But the fighter still remains.
The Boxer
Song lyrics, Bridge over Troubled Water (1970)

Richard Cobden photo
Muammar Gaddafi photo
Edwin Lefèvre photo

“That is one trouble about trading on a large scale.
You cannot sneak out as you can when you pike along.”

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter XI, p. 134

David Lloyd George photo
Letty Cottin Pogrebin photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Lee Atwater photo
Blackie Lawless photo

“F*ck political correctness, that went down with the World Trade Center.”

Blackie Lawless (1956) musician, songwriter and actor

In the liner notes of the album "Dying for the World"

John Milton photo

“Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears,
And slits the thin-spun life.”

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 64; comparable to: "Erant quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur" (Translated: "Some might consider him as too fond of fame, for the desire of glory clings even to the best of men longer than any other passion"), Tacitus, Historiae, iv. 6; said of Helvidius Priscus.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Maneka Gandhi photo

“Money through trade of slaughtered animals goes into terrorism, therefore goes into killing us, why are we allowing this?”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On India's beef exports, as quoted in "Funds from cow slaughter racket being pumped into terror: Maneka Gandhi" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Funds-from-cow-slaughter-racket-being-pumped-into-terror-Maneka-Gandhi/articleshow/42477955.cms, The Times of India (15 September 2014)
2011-present

“It cannot be said that at the time these inscriptions were set up at ANhilwãD Pãtan, Prabhas Patan, Khambat, Junagadh and other places, the Hindus of Gujarat had had no taste of what Islam had in store for them, their women, their children, their cities, their temples, their idols, their priests, and their properties. The invasion of Ulugh Khãn that was to subjugate Gujarat to a long spell of Muslim rule, was the eighth in a series which started within a few years after the Prophet’s death at Medina in AD 632. Five Islamic invasions had been mounted on Gujarat before Siddharãja JayasiMha ascended the throne of that kingdom in AD 1094 - first in AD 636 on Broach by sea; second in AD 732-35 by land; third and fourth in AD 756 and 776 by sea; and fifth by Mahmûd of Ghazni in AD 1026. Two others had materialised by the time the Muslim ship-owner set up his inscription in AD 1264 on a mosque at Prabhas Patan. The sixth invasion was by Muhammad Ghûrî in AD 1178, and the seventh was by Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak in AD 1197. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence is that either the Hindus of Gujarat had a very short memory or that they did not understand at all the inspiration at the back of these invasions. The temple of Somnath which stood, after the invasion of Mahmûd of Ghazni in AD 1026, as a grim reminder of the character of Islam, had also failed to teach them any worthwhile lesson. Nor did they visualize that the Muslim settlements in their midst could play a role other than that of carrying on trade and commerce.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Walter Raleigh photo

“For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c

Lin Join-sane photo

“The service trade agreement is a pact that benefits related sectors across the Taiwan Strait and promotes the interests of the public on both sides. It will result in a win-win situation for both sides.”

Lin Join-sane (1944) Taiwanese politician

Lin Join-sane (2013) cited in " Cross-strait service trade pact signed http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/06/22/2003565371" on Taipei Times, 22 June 2013.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“[I]f the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour?”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1782, reported in Henry Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux, Historical Sketches of Statesmen who Flourished in the Time of George III (1845), Vol. II, p. 62.
1780s

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
Jack Vance photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Nigel Farage photo
Auguste Rodin photo

“I admit, of course, that the artist does not see nature as the vulgar do. His emotion reveals to him the inner truths that underlie appearance. But the only principle In art is to copy what one sees. Every other method is ruinous. No one can embellish Nature. It is simply and solely a question of seeing. Doubtless a mediocre man, when he copies will never produce a work of art. He looks without seeing. No matter how minutely he observes, the result will be flat and without character. But the artist's trade is not for mediocre men, and no amount of training can supply them with talent. The artist sees - he sees with his heart. He sees deep into the heart of Nature. To the artist everything in Nature is beautiful.
The vulgarian imagines that what looks to him ugly In Nature is not material for the artist. He would forbid us to represent what displeases and offends him. He makes a grave mistake. What is commonly called ugliness in Nature may become a great beauty in art.
In the realm of realities, people regard as ugly everything that is deformed and diseased and that suggests sickness, weakness and suffering. They regard as ugly everything that defies regularity, which is to them the symbol and condition of health and strength. A hump is ugly, bow-legs are ugly, misery in rags is ugly. Ugly, again, are the soul and conduct of the immoral, the vicious, the criminal man, the abnormal man who is an enemy of society; ugly is the soul of the parricide, the traitor, the unscrupulous slave of ambition. And it is right that the lives and the of which we can expect only evil should be given an odious epithet.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“The fifth and most important principle of our foreign policy is support of national independence—the right of each people to govern themselves—and to shape their own institutions. For a peaceful world order will be possible only when each country walks the way that it has chosen to walk for itself. We follow this principle by encouraging the end of colonial rule. We follow this principle, abroad as well as at home, by continued hostility to the rule of the many by the few—or the oppression of one race by another. We follow this principle by building bridges to Eastern Europe. And I will ask the Congress for authority to remove the special tariff restrictions which are a barrier to increasing trade between the East and the West. The insistent urge toward national independence is the strongest force of today's world in which we live. In Africa and Asia and Latin America it is shattering the designs of those who would subdue others to their ideas or their will. It is eroding the unity of what was once a Stalinist empire. In recent months a number of nations have east out those who would subject them to the ambitions of mainland China. History is on the side of freedom and is on the side of societies shaped from the genius of each people. History does not favor a single system or belief—unless force is used to make it so. That is why it has been necessary for us to defend this basic principle of our policy, to defend it in Berlin, in Korea, in Cuba—and tonight in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Alfred de Zayas photo

“There is no need to adopt more “free trade agreements”, which are asymmetrical agreements providing privileges to investors but no enforceable obligations.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/151/19/PDF/G1615119.pdf?OpenElement.
2016, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

Ulysses S. Grant photo
Robert Kuttner photo

“Technological advance often thrives in sheltered and subsidized markets, which defy free trade.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 3, Trade, p. 97

“Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Five, The Politics Of International Trade, p. 172

Richard Cobden photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
John Gray photo
Mario Draghi photo

“The crisis has not been overcome, but there are many encouraging signs. The economy is recovering in many countries, the imbalances in European trade are declining and the budget deficits in the monetary union are falling.”

Mario Draghi (1947) Italian banker and economist

spiegel.de http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/spiegel-interview-with-ecb-president-mario-draghi-a-941489.html.

Victor Villaseñor photo
Robert E. Lee photo

“I should NOT be trading on the blood of my men.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

On refusing requests to write his memoirs, as quoted in Gentlemen of Virginia (1961) page 188 by Marshall William Fishwick; also cited as possibly apocryphal in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (2004) edited by Elizabeth M. Knowles

Amir Taheri photo
Frank Chodorov photo
David Fleming photo
Khalid A. Al-Falih photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Didier Sornette photo

“Indeed, the financial world is such that any insight is almost immediately used to trade for a profit.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 5, Modeling Financial Bubbles And Market Crashes, p. 136.

George W. Bush photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo

“If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Adam Smith photo
Qianlong Emperor photo

“China trades with your country”

Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) emperor of the Qing Dynasty

Russian-Qing commercial treaty in 1793 . (He Qiutao, n.d.: 12.2a) a translation by Gang Zhao of HE QIUTAO (n.d.) Shuofang beicheng (On the defense of the northern frontier). N.p.: Boshan shuju.
Source: Zhao 2006 https://web.archive.org/web/20140325231543/https://webspace.utexas.edu/hl4958/perspectives/Zhao%20-%20reinventing%20china.pdf, p. 9.

Michael Shea photo
Jean-Baptiste Say photo

“When war becomes a trade, it benefits, like all other trades, from the division of labour.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book III, On Consumption, Chapter VI, Section II, p. 429

John Bright photo

“If a man have three or four children, he has just three or four times as much interest in having the Corn Laws abolished as the man who has none. Your children will grow up to be men and women. It may be that your heads will be laid in the grave before they come to manhood or womanhood; but they will grow up, and want employment at honest trades—want houses and furniture, food and clothing, and all the necessaries and comforts of life. They will be honest and industrious as yourselves. But the difficulties which surround you will be increased tenfold by the time they have arrived at your age. Trade will then have become still more crippled; the supply of food still more diminished; the taxation of the country still further increased. The great lords, and some other people, will have become still more powerful, unless the freemen and electors of Durham and of other places stand to their guns, and resolve that, whatever may come of Queen, or Lords, or Commons, or Church, or anybody—great and powerful, and noble though they be—the working classes will stand by the working classes; and will no longer lay themselves down in the dust to be trampled upon by the iron heel of monopoly, and have their very lives squeezed out of them by evils such as I have described.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech during the general election of 1843, quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 113-114.
1840s

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Donald J. Trump photo
George W. Bush photo