Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune Quotes

Scrupulous people are not suited to great affairs.

It is not error which opposes the progress of truth; it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, every thing which favors inaction.

The expenses of government, having for their object the interest of all, should be borne by everyone, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honored in contributing to those expenses.

The whole mass of humanity . . . marches constantly, though slowly, toward greater perfection.

If the land was divided among all the inhabitants of a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more; it is evident that all of them being equal, no one would work for another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith to pay another for his labour, for each person having only such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and would not have any thing to give in exchange for the labour of others.

All merchandize has the two essential properties of money, to measure and to represent all value: and in this sense all merchandize is money.

Every soil does not produce every material.

Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis. He snatched the lightning from the sky and the sceptre from tyrants.

All is more or less proper to serve as a common measure, in proportion as it is more or less in general use, of a more similar quality, and more easy to be divided into aliquot parts. All is more or less applicable for the purpose of a general pledge of exchange, in proportion as it is less susceptible of decay or alteration in quantity or quality.

The earth has been cultivated before it has been divided; the cultivation itself having been the only motive for a division, and for that law which secures to every one his property. For the first persons who have employed themselves in cultivation, have probably worked as much land as their strength would permit, and, consequently, more than was necessary for their own nourishment.

What I admire in Columbus is not his having discovered a new world but his having gone to search for it on the faith of an opinion.

All money is essentially merchandize.

Gold and silver are constituted, by the nature of things, money, and universal money, independent of all convention, and of all laws.