Alfred Marshall Quotations

The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the 19th century.

In the absence of any short term in common use to represent all desirable things, or things that satisfy human wants, we may use the term Goods for that purpose.

All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth.

Producer's Surplus is a convenient name for the genus of which the rent of land is the leading species.

Again, most of the chief distinctions marked by economic terms are differences not of kind but of degree.

All labour is directed towards producing some effect.

And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.

Individual and national rights to wealth rest on the basis of civil and international law, or at least of custom that has the force of law.

The commercial storm leaves its path strewn with ruin. When it is over there is calm, but a dull, heavy calm.

We might as well reasonably dispute whether it is the upper or the under blade of a pair of scissors that cuts a piece of paper, as whether value is governed by demand or supply.