Top 100 Quotes About Commodities
#1. Teaching can be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless someone buys ... yet there are teachers who think they have done a good day's teaching irrespective of what the pupils have learned.
John Dewey
#2. The first of all commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products.
Henry Charles Carey
#3. Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.
Jonathan Kozol
#4. The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.
Sol LeWitt
#5. In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered to him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed.
Edward Bernays
#6. By 'consumer society', I mean one in which commodities are increasingly used to express the core values of that society but also become the principal form through which people come to see, recognise and understand those values.
Daniel Miller
#7. I have an eccentric view on commodities not necessarily shared by my colleagues - or by almost anybody. And that is, we're running out of everything.
Jeremy Grantham
#8. Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.
Karl Marx
#9. Coal, in truth, stands not beside but entirely above all other commodities. It is the material energy of the country - the universal aid - the factor in everything we do." - William Stanley Jevons, economist, 1865
Naomi Klein
#10. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities.
Karl Marx
#11. As exchange-values, all commodities are merely definite quantities of congealed labour-time.
Karl Marx
#12. It is obvious, moreover, that the formation of price in capitalist society must differ from the formation of price in social conditions based upon the simple production of commodities.
Rudolf Hiferding
#13. Common reference to abstract labor. Marx therefore notes: "Money as a measure of value is the necessary form of appearance of the measure of value which is intrinsic to commodities, namely labour-time" (Capital, 1:188).
Anonymous
#14. The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.
Karl Marx
#15. The truth, in plain terms, is this: That men consume cloth and corn by fire or by using them, and that the effect is the same as regards money, but not as regards wealth, for it is precisely in the use of commodities that wealth or material prosperity consists.
Frederic Bastiat
#16. Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.
Morihei Ueshiba
#17. These are the lords
That have bought titles: men may merchandise
Wares, ay and traffic in all commodities
From sea to sea, and from shore to shore:
But in my thought, of all things that are sold,
'Tis pity honor should be bought for gold:
It cuts off all desert.
Eliza Haywood
#19. When the commodities go up and the cost of transportation is going up, and the value of the dollar is going down, it's all going to translate to an 8 to 10 percent rise in food prices.
John Catsimatidis
#20. Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches.
David Hume
#21. A good prince will tax as lightly as possible those commodities which are used by the poorest members of society: grain, bread, beer, wine, clothing, and all other staples without which human life could not exist.
Desiderius Erasmus
#22. Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
Samuel Johnson
#23. Manufacture, don't just trade. There is money in manufacturing even though it is capital intensive. To achieve a big breakthrough, I had to start manufacturing the same product I was trading on; which is commodities.
Aliko Dangote
#24. If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.
John Maynard Keynes
#26. The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.
Adam Smith
#27. When goods are exchanged between countries, they must be paid for by commodities or gold. They cannot be paid for by the notes, certificates, and checks of the purchaser's country, since these are of value only in the country of issue.
Carroll Quigley
#28. Men live by rules they've made for themselves. And among those rules is one specifying that women are merely commodities for men to possess. A daughter belongs to her father, a wife to her husband. A woman's own desires present obstacles for men and are best ignored.
Natsuo Kirino
#29. The reporting of news has to be understood as propaganda for commodities, and events by images.
Christopher Lasch
#30. Rampant inflation is just as hard to live with as the devaluation of commodities.
David Harvey
#31. If the gains from trade in commodities are substantial, they are small compared to trade in ideas
David Landes
#32. While foreign competitors, French or Japanese or German, merrily bid for contracts abroad, American companies find themselves tangled in a web of legislation designed to express disapproval, block trade in certain commodities, or perhaps deny resources to disfavored or hostile regimes.
Elliott Abrams
#33. Although the rudiments of snobbery are there, its finer developments are basically alien to the Australian soul - that is, if Australians have a soul; many people believe that they are too matter-of-fact and down-to-earth to have such fancy commodities.
George Mikes
#34. Life can be lived at a remove. You trade in futures, and then you trade in derivatives of futures. Banks make more money trading derivatives than they do trading actual commodities.
Sebastian Faulks
#35. The crisis of modern democracy is a profound one. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder.
Arundhati Roy
#37. We discovered that safety and security are commodities you can sell in return for excitement but you can never buy them back.
Louise Doughty
#38. In a world of increasing interdependence, energy security will depend much on how countries manage their relations with one another. That is why energy security will be one of the main challenges of foreign policy in the years ahead. Oil and gas have always been political commodities.
Daniel Yergin
#39. Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication among them.
Fred Brooks
#40. Prudence is what makes someone a great commodities trader - the capacity to face reality squarely in the eye without allowing emotion or ego to get in the way. It's what is needed by every quarterback or battlefield general.
John Ortberg
#41. I think it is important to acknowledge the extent to which the black middle class tends to rely on a kind of imagined struggle that gets projected into commodities like kente cloth for example on the one hand and images like the Million Man March.
Angela Davis
#42. Given the current state of publishing, I think it helps to have a brand name on the cover of your book. Comedians are proven commodities with built-in audiences. They may not have the writing chops of a Dave Eggers, but they're salacious and funny and self-reflective.
Michael Showalter
#43. To succeed in business, you must build a brand and never destroy it. One competitive advantage I had when I ventured into manufacturing was my brand "Dangote," which I diligently built in the course of my trading commodities.
Aliko Dangote
#44. Plastics. Polyesters. Resins. Ersatz - industrial uses. Do you see? No consumers' commodities.
Philip K. Dick
#45. Now, after the material resources of the colonies have been looted, their spiritual and cultural resources are being transformed into commodities for the world market.
Maria Mies
#46. Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.
Adam Smith
#47. The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.
Karl Marx
#48. Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.
David Ricardo
#49. It is a mere futile process to exchange one set of commodities for another, if the parties; after this new distribution of goods has taken place, are not better off than they were before.
Thomas Malthus
#50. Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity.
Karl Marx
#51. Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.
Seth Godin
#52. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
Alexander Hamilton
#53. The commodity price easing really does not play too much role in our margins because our basic raw material - steel - is not really a commodities engineering steel.
Baba Kalyani
#54. Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by "opinions" when you reach DECISIONS, you will not succeed in any undertaking.
Napoleon Hill
#55. Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.
Thomas Hobbes
#56. Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency ... and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It's not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating.
Alan Greenspan
#57. The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale.
Johanna Siguroardottir
#58. When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.
Bono
#59. At times, some journalists see nothing in the people apart from an opportunity to make material gain. They see them as consumers to whom we sell commodities at huge profits that keep our bank accounts growing.
Wadah Khanfar
#60. I do not think commodities are taken for granted. One of the convergences in time I noticed, and to me seemed very important, was the emergence of paper money. There had been permissionary notes, exchanging money by writing it, but there was no duplicated form of guaranteeing an exchange.
Marina Warner
#61. This is a commodities business, so the companies that do it best are the ones that do it more efficiently.
Kate Warne
#62. No extension of foreign trade will immediately increase the amount of value in a country, although it will very powerfully contribute to increase the mass of commodities and therefore the sum of enjoyments.
David Ricardo
#63. One Way to think of the market ideology and the empire is that it produces alienation and loss of human vitality. The culture flows from the assumption that the accumulation of commodities will make us safe and happy.
Walter Brueggemann
#64. Those who want to buy wisdom remain with out wisdom, because money buys nothing except commodities.
Meseret Geneti
#65. Quality wine, Scotch, and coffee had been the three irreplaceable commodities after the death of Old Earth.
Dan Simmons
#66. A lot of very successful businessmen share some of these sociopathic traits - a lack of empathy, seeing people as commodities, projecting an air of sincerity when everything is actually calculated.
Oscar Isaac
#67. Over two billion people in China and India need commodities to grow their economies and improve their living standards.
Ivan Glasenberg
#68. Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into commodities.
Karl Marx
#69. The exchangeable value of all commodities, rises as the difficulties of their production increase.
David Ricardo
#70. The world wants India to remain an import-based economy. Then India can be a dumping ground where gold can be dumped and other commodities such as oil and gas. They look at India as a huge market.
Anil Agarwal
#71. The facility of obtaining food is beneficial in two ways to the owners of capital, it at the same time raises profits and increases the amount of consumable commodities.
David Ricardo
#72. Tragically, one of the rarest commodities in our culture is empathy. People are hungry for empathy, They don't know how to ask for it.
Marshall B. Rosenberg
#73. To believe that the intolerable crime is to burn a few cars and rob some shops, whereas to kill a young man is trivial, is typically in keeping with what Marx regarded as the principal alienation of capitalism: the primacy of things over existence, of commodities over life and machines over workers
Alain Badiou
#74. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.
Erich Fromm
#75. The geographical movement of money and commodities as capital is not the same as the movements of products and of precious metals. Capital is, after all, money used in a certain way, and is by no means identical with all money uses.
David Harvey
#76. But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.
Alfred Marshall
#77. Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited.
James Gibbons
#78. A lot of family members worked in the joint commodities family business. It was a classic case of capitalism at work and socialism at home.
Uday Kotak
#79. I don't think you should invest in commodities. Eddie Murphy made it seem risky in Trading Places.
Eugene Mirman
#80. Remember this: of all the commodities men trade in, information is the most valuable by far.
Raymond E. Feist
#81. Preachers' kids who gravitate toward ministry are commodities. I hire all I can. We see church differently than everybody else.
Andy Stanley
#82. In the economy of the cuckoo people that populate central banks, everything is possible. What you have is gigantic bubbles, the NASDAQ in 2000, then the housing bubble and then commodities in 2008 when oil went from $78 to $147 before plunging to $32 within six months.
Marc Faber
#83. Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving, and receiving.
Ludwig Von Mises
#84. The positive aspect of my negative view is essentially that you shouldn't own cash and government bonds, but you should be in assets like real estate or equities or precious metals or in commodities.
Marc Faber
#85. It is here we come to the heart of the matter. The economic principle of comparative advantage', 'a country may, in return for manufactured commodities, import corn even if it can be grown with less labour than in the country from which it is imported
David Ricardo
#86. Let's embrace productive capitalism, not casino capitalism, by restoring transparency and true competition in the commodities markets.
Maria Cantwell
#87. Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.
David Ricardo
#88. No one likes kids. We say we do, and we take pictures of pregnant women for People Magazine, but really they're commodities - we hate them around, we hate them on airplanes, we consider them a grand imposition and almost a style choice.
Sarah Ruhl
#89. Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.
Adam Smith
#90. 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.
David Ricardo
#91. For things to have value in man's world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man's oldest and most constant commodity is woman.
Ana Castillo
#92. To alter the money value of commodities, by altering the value of money, and yet to raise the same money amount by taxes, is then undoubtedly to increase the burthens of society.
David Ricardo
#93. A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money.
David Ricardo
#94. With such enormous bucks devoted to trading in oil and other commodities, the distortions that they cause have been exacerbated.
Gary Weiss
#95. Why are vegans made fun of while the inhumane factory farming process regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit?
Ellen Page
#96. Medicines are unusual commodities. Important drugs can save the lives and protect the health of millions. Their consumption can bring huge benefits, by helping patients to avoid infection and preventing serious damage to the economies of families, nations and even humanity at large.
Thomas Pogge
#97. Conversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Ambrose Bierce
#98. we will never be truly capable of 'loving our neighbour' as long as we continue to view the people around us as commodities, capital or competition
Tristan Sherwin
#99. I have come to the conclusion that silence and time are the most precious commodities.
Eloisa James
#100. The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly.
Thomas Malthus
