The merchants will manage [commerce] the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves.
Interpretation
Commerce flourishes best when merchants have the freedom to operate without excessive regulation.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the importance of free enterprise and the idea that merchants, when allowed to operate autonomously, can optimize their practices and enhance overall economic productivity. Jefferson advocates for a limited government role in business, suggesting that the natural abilities and decisions of merchants are best suited to advance commerce without interference.
In practice
This quote can be used in a business seminar to highlight the importance of entrepreneurship.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
βWe must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary.
War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.
In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.
It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.
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