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 SMITHA 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.
More Adam Smith Quotes
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What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
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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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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.
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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.
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The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
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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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We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.
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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.
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Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
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Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
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Have lots of experiments, but make sure they’re strategically focused.
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
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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