Again, most of the chief distinctions marked by economic terms are differences not of kind but of degree. (Alfred Marshall)
Economics has as its purpose firstly to acquire knowledge for its own sake, and secondly to throw light on practical issues. But though we are bound, before entering on any study, to consider carefully what are its uses, we should not plan out our work with direct reference to them. (Alfred Marshall)
The modern developments of economic science in relation to rent indicate progress. For we are learning that what is commonly called the rent of land is really a very complex thing made up of many elements, some of which differ more widely from one another than it, as a whole, differs from profits, or than some elements of it differ from wages. (Alfred Marshall)
Producer's Surplus is a convenient name for the genus of which the rent of land is the leading species. (Alfred Marshall)
Civilized countries generally adopt gold or silver or both as money. (Alfred Marshall)
Consumption may be regarded as negative production. (Alfred Marshall)
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. (Alfred Marshall)
All labour is directed towards producing some effect. (Alfred Marshall)
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. (Alfred Marshall)
In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old. (Alfred Marshall)
Slavery was regarded by Aristotle as an ordinance of nature, and so probably was it by the slaves themselves in olden time. (Alfred Marshall)
The price of every thing rises and falls from time to time and place to place; and with every such change the purchasing power of money changes so far as that thing goes. (Alfred Marshall)
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. (Alfred Marshall)
Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth. (Alfred Marshall)
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)