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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

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
In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.
ADAM SMITH

Competition Freedom Trade Work
It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
ADAM SMITH

Desire Man Money Power
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
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.
ADAM SMITH

Economy Greatness King People Pretend Privacy Society
Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things.
ADAM SMITH

Economy Money Price Work
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
ADAM SMITH

Conversation End Happiness Leaving People Price Togetherness Trade
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.
ADAM SMITH

Deal Different Manufacture Respect Trade
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.
ADAM SMITH

Gold Money Pay Price Purchase Wealth Work World
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.
ADAM SMITH

Defense Guard Hate Innocence Justice Nature Safety Security
Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
ADAM SMITH

Cheerful Grace Habit Happiness
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
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
ADAM SMITH

Fingers Happiness Wisdom
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.
ADAM SMITH

Age Kind Man Master Ourselves People World
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.
ADAM SMITH

Corruption Emotion Greatness Moral Ourselves Person Poor Powerful Rich Worship
Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.
ADAM SMITH

Buy Material Money Price Purpose Service

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.

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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.

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