Have lots of experiments, but make sure they’re strategically focused.
ADAM SMITHThe rate of profit is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
More Adam Smith Quotes
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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.
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Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things.
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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.
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What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
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The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.
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The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.
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Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.
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Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.
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The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.
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When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.
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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.
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That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
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It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
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Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
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Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State.
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It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.
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A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.
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In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.
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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.
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Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
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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.
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In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
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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.
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The game women play is men.
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Labour was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.
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The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.
ADAM SMITH