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Money is neither a material to work upon, nor a tool to work with.
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“Money is neither a material to work upon, nor a tool to work with.”

Adam Smith

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Source
The Wealth of Nations
Date
1776
Meaning

Meaning of “Money is neither a material to work upon,…”

Money facilitates exchange and payment but is distinguished from the materials, tools, and subsistence that directly enable productive work.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter II; Project Gutenberg #3300. Smith is explaining money as part of circulating capital rather than denying its practical usefulness.

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Wages, profit, and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue, as well as of all exchangeable value.
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“Wages, profit, and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue, as well as of all exchangeable value.”

Adam Smith · The Wealth of Nations · 1776
Meaning & context

Smith separates major forms of income according to labour, stock, and land, providing a historical framework for how revenue is distributed.

Source details

The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VI; Project Gutenberg #3300. The statement is part of Smith’s eighteenth-century theory of price and income distribution.

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The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
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“The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”

Adam Smith · The Wealth of Nations · 1776
Meaning & context

Smith distinguishes nominal money price from the labour and sacrifice required to acquire something, making cost broader than the number printed on a transaction.

Source details

The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V; Project Gutenberg #3300. This belongs to Smith’s labour-command discussion of real and nominal price.

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The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages of labour.
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“The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages of labour.”

Adam Smith · The Wealth of Nations · 1776
Meaning & context

Smith begins his wages discussion from the idea that labour’s product is the worker’s original recompense before later property relations divide output.

Source details

The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VIII; Project Gutenberg #3300. The historical spelling “recompence” is retained and the sentence belongs to a larger theoretical argument.

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life is the end and aim of consumption.
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“life is the end and aim of consumption.”

John Ruskin · Unto This Last and Other Essays on Political Economy · 1862
Meaning & context

Consumption is judged by what it ultimately does for human life, making economic activity a means rather than an end in itself within Ruskin’s argument.

Source details

Unto This Last, fourth essay; Project Gutenberg #36541. The line follows Ruskin’s distinction between production and consumption and retains the nineteenth-century political-economy setting.

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Production does not consist in things laboriously made
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“Production does not consist in things laboriously made”

John Ruskin · Unto This Last and Other Essays on Political Economy · 1862
Meaning & context

Ruskin rejects sheer labor-input as a sufficient definition of production and redirects attention toward whether what is made can actually serve a useful human end.

Source details

Unto This Last, fourth essay; Project Gutenberg #36541. The sentence continues by defining production through serviceable consumption; tagging it to productivity records that critique of raw output rather than equating Ruskin with modern productivity science.

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