Quotes by Antoine Louis Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy
1754 – 1836
Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) was a philosophe and one of the founders in the 1790s of the classical liberal republican group known as the Idéologues (which included Cabanis, Condorcet, Constant, Daunou, Say, Madame de Staël), a politician under several regimes spanning the Revolution and the Restoration, and an influential author.
Bio
His writings particularly impressed Thomas Jefferson, who translated an published 2 of them in America. While a member of the Senate, he opposed Napoleon, and also spoke out against the subsequent constitutional monarchy, and in support of American-style laissez-faire republicanism. He coined the term “ideology” while he was at the Institut National.
Economics
Destutt de Tracy on the damage which government debt and the class which lives off loans to the state cause the industrious classes (1817)
Economics
Destutt de Tracy on society as “nothing but a succession of exchanges” (1817)
Economics
Destutt de Tracy on the mutually beneficial nature of exchange (1817)