“We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.”

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.

Have you never heard what the wise men say: all of the future exists in the past.

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.

Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

Ignorance is better than knowledge misapplied.

When people talk to you in such glowing terms, that is the time to be very, very alert because the worst of the mistakes are made in the best of the times.

Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools.

If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.

I want people to find their inner depth.