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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.

Adam Smith

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.
ADAM SMITH

Demand Man Market Poor Product Satisfaction
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.
ADAM SMITH

Cost Man Price Reality Trouble
A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third.
ADAM SMITH

Character Different Garden Hands Independent Money Pay Person Production
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.
ADAM SMITH

Enjoy Fulfill Human Life Man Necessary Poor Rich Satisfaction
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
ADAM SMITH

Consumption End Production Purpose
Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.
ADAM SMITH

Administration Country Justice Party Pay Performance Reality Responsibility Worst
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

Fools Generation Money Problem Reward Save Work
The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.
ADAM SMITH

Afraid Cure Evil Human Injustice Kind Man Nature Rule Violence
Man, an animal that makes bargains.
ADAM SMITH

Animal Man One Liner
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.
ADAM SMITH

Employment Greatness Loss Natural Profit Prosperity Trade
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.
ADAM SMITH

Country Demand Land Love Man Natural Privacy Produce Property
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
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
ADAM SMITH

Affect Goodness Myself Trade
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
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it’s people.
ADAM SMITH

Children Material Nation People Prosperity Wealth

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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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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Popular Authors

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