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Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

Adam Smith

The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.
ADAM SMITH

Customer Discipline Employment Exercise Fear Lose Man Mistake Reality Work
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
ADAM SMITH

Cost Man Price Reality Trouble
A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.
ADAM SMITH

Earth Generation Mad Nature Power Property Right
Defense is superior to opulence.
ADAM SMITH

Defense One Liner Protection
The division of labour was limited by the extent of the market.
ADAM SMITH

Limitation Market Price
In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
ADAM SMITH

Himself Man Necessary Work
As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.
ADAM SMITH

Beginning Control Destruction End Government Management Nature Relationship
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
ADAM SMITH

Destroy Force Freedom
The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
ADAM SMITH

Change Fact Generation Greatness Mathematics Opinion Rule Theory
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
ADAM SMITH

Consience Fear Vice Virtue
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it’s people.
ADAM SMITH

Children Material Nation People Prosperity Wealth
Have lots of experiments, but make sure they’re strategically focused.
ADAM SMITH

Advice Experiment Focus Strategy
Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
ADAM SMITH

Beggar Choice Citizenship Independent
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
ADAM SMITH

Administration Carry Easy Justice Low Nature Peace State Tolerance
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
ADAM SMITH

Ambition Goodness Service
I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
ADAM SMITH

Faith Greatness Myself Politics

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

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Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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