“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.”

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

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.

Every man lives by exchanging.

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things.

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.

It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.

There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.

An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

We don’t have a lot of expectations [for Donald J. Trump] because the American administration is not only about the President; it’s about different powers within this administration, the different lobbies that they are going to influence any President.

The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

Mistakes were made is something we heard back in ’92, and that has sort of been the Clinton administration’s mantra. I can’t imagine that Al Gore is going to pick up that statement and carry it through the next election.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

Move over to Egypt. Once again, the [Barack] Obama administration, encouraged by Republicans, toppled [Hosni] Mubarak who had been a reliable ally of the United States, of Israel, and in its place, [Mohamed] Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood came in, a terrorist organization.

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.

When enacted into law, the ‘Protect America First Act’ will end the flood of illegal border crossings unleashed during the first 50 days of the Biden administration.

John Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan administration, but he’s regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship.