William Petty Quotations

Every seaman is not only a navigator, but a merchant and also a soldier.

Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers.

That some are poorer than others, ever was and ever will be: And that many are naturally querulous and envious, is an Evil as old as the World.

Wherefore the race being not to the swift, etc. but time and chance happening to all men, I leave the Judgement of the whole to the Candid, of whose correction I shall never be impatient.

Here we are to remember that in consequence of our opinion that labor is the Father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the Mother, that the state by killing, mutilating, or imprisoning their members do withal punish themselves.

A thousand acres that can feed a thousand souls is better than ten thousand acres of no more effect.

I hope no man takes what I said about the living and dieing of men for mathematical demonstration.

No man pays double or twice for the same thing, forasmuch as nothing can be spent but once.

The trade of banks is the buying and selling of interest and exchange.

An house is of a double nature, viz., one, wherein it is a way and means of expence, the other as it is an instrument and tool of gain.

Wherefore when a man giveth out his money upon condition that be may not demand it back until a certain time to come, he certainly may take a compensation for this inconvenience which he admits against himself.

I make this question, whether, since they do all live by begging... it were not better for the state to keep them.

Another cause which aggravates taxes is the force of paying them in money at a certain tinge, and not in commodities at the most convenient seasons.

Now, forasmuch as princes are not only powerful but rich, according to a number of people (hands being the Father as lands are the Mother or Womb of Wealth), it is no wonder why states by encouraging marriage, advance their own interests.

It were good to know the geometrical content, figure and situation of all the lands of a kingdom, especially according to its most natural bounds.

In the next place, it will be asked, who shall pay these men? I answer, everybody.

If great cities are naturally apt to remove their seats, I ask, which way? I say, in the case of London it must be westward... If it follow from hence that the palaces of the greatest men will remove westward, it will also naturally follow that the dwelling of others who depend upon them will creep after them.

The method I take to do this is not yet very usual; for instead of using only comparative and superlative Words, and intellectual Arguments, I have taken the course (as a Specimen of the Political Arithmetic I have long aimed at) to express myself in Terms of Number, Weight, or Measure; to use only Arguments of Sense, and to consider only such Causes, as have visible Foundations in Nature.

It were good to know how much hay an acre of every sort will bear; how many cattle the same weight of each sort of hay will feed and fatten; what quantity of grain and other commodities the same acre will bear in one, three or seven years; unto what use each soil is proper; all which particulars I call intrinsic value, for there is also another value merely accidental or extrinsic.

Without the knowledge of the true number of the people, as a principle, the whole scope and use of keeping bills of birth and burials is impaired; wherefore by laborious conjectures and calculations to deduce the number of people from the births and burials, may be ingenious, but very preposterous.

Raising of money may indeed change the species, but with so much loss as the foreign pieces were raised unto, above their intrinsick value.

Money is the best rule of commerce.