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Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
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Definition:[1727 - 1781]a French economist who unsuccessfully tried to rein in the lavish expenditures and sinecures of the nobility. He opposed supporting the Americans in their revolutionary war against the Brits since France was already deeply in debt. His recommendations were inconvenient so he was generally ignored by his peers and the nobility.---a French economist and statesman. Originally considered a physiocrat, he is today best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism. He is thought to be the first economist to have recognized the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture.[...]text from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike
painting: by Antoine Graincourt (1782), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13200599
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America must preserve herself from these illusions; and take care to avoid being what your ministerial writers are frequently saying She will be — an image of our Europe — a mass of divided powers contending for territory and commerce, and continually cementing the slavery of the people with their own blood.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. Letter to Richard Price (1778)
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The person of whom I speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet— of exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists.
Edgar Allan Poe. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4: The Landscape Garden (1842)
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They are the four vanguards of the human race, marching towards the four cardinal points of progress. Diderot towards the beautiful, Turgot towards the useful, Voltaire towards the true, Rousseau towards the just. But by the side of and above the philosophers, there were the sophists, a venomous vegetation mingled with a healthy growth, hemlock in the virgin forest.Victor Hugo. Les Misérables (1887)
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