Anne Robert Jacques Turgot quotes

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot was a French economist and statesman, renowned as an early advocate of economic liberalism. A leading figure of the Enlightenment, he introduced significant reforms as Controller-General of Finances under Louis XVI. He is remembered for his efforts to modernize the French economy and his influence on later economic thought. Here are 16 of his quotes:

All money is essentially merchandize.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

He seized the lightning from Heaven and the scepter from the Tyrants.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

The productions of the earth require long and difficult preparations, before they are rendered fit to supply the wants of men.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

Not only there does not exist, nor can exist, any other revenue than the clear produce of land, but it is the earth also that has furnished all capitals, that form the mass of all the advances of culture and commerce. It has produced, without culture, the first gross and indispensible advances of the first labourers; all the rest are the accumulated fruits of the œconomy of successive ages, since they have begun to cultivate the earth.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

It is impossible not to wish ardently that this people may attain to all the prosperity of which they are capable. They are the hope of the world. They may become a model to it. They may prove by fact that men can be free and yet tranquil; and that it is in their power to rescue themselves from the chains in which tyrants and knaves of all descriptions have presumed to bind them under the pretence of the public good. They may exhibit an example of political liberty, of religious liberty, of commercial liberty, and of industry.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

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.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

The productions of the earth require long and difficult preparations, before they are rendered fit to supply the wants of men. The productions which the earth supplies to satisfy the different wants of man, will not, for the most part, administer to those wants, in the state nature affords them; it is necessary they should undergo different operations, and be prepared by art. Wheat must be converted into flour, then into bread; hides must be dressed or tanned; wool and cotton must be spun; silk must be taken from the cod; hemp and flax must be soaked, peeled, spun, and wove into different textures; then cut and sewed together again to make garments, &c. If the same man who cultivates on his own land these different articles, and who raises them to supply his wants, was obliged to perform all the intermediate operations himself, it is certain he would succeed very badly.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot