“Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.”

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

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.

Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.

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.

Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.

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.

An English university is a sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection after they have been . Hunted out of every corner of the world.

To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.

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.

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.

A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it’s people.

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?