“Whether a bank lent one million, ten million, or a hundred millions, they would not permanently alter the market rate of interest; they would alter only the value of the money they issued.”

The demand for money is regulated entirely by its value, and its value by its quantity.

If English money was of the same value then as before, Hamburgh money must have risen in value. But where is the proof of this?

Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

Gold and silver are no doubt subject to fluctuations, from the discovery of new and more abundant mines; but such discoveries are rare, and their effects, though powerful, are limited to periods of comparatively short duration.

Rent is the portion of the earth, which is paid to the landlord for the user of the original and indestructible powers of the soil

Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

If a commodity were in no way useful, – in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, – it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it.

Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.

If the demand for home commodities should be diminished, because of the fall of rent on the part of the landlords, it will be increased in a far greater degree by the increased opulence of the commercial classes.

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of themarket, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.

After all the fertile land in the immediate neighbourhood of the first settlers were cultivated, if capital and population increased, more food would be required, and it could only be procured from land not so advantageously situated.

Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production.

If then the prosperity of the commercial classes, will most certainly lead to accumulation of capital, and the encouragement of productive industry; these can by no means be so surely obtained as by a fall in the price of corn.

Neither machines, nor the commodities made by them, rise in real value, but all commodities made by machines fall, and fall in proportion to their durability.

There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.

Entrepreneurs are always taking feedback, especially from their customers, bankers, workers, and sales force.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank accounts, that drives our democracy.

Laughing all the way to the bank, I spray flames. They cannot tame or placate the monster.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

The world needs banking but it does not need banks.