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 SMITHThe world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
More Adam Smith Quotes
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Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things.
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Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
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The game women play is men.
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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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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.
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The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
ADAM SMITH -
Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
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With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
ADAM SMITH