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It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

Adam Smith

The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be. The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
ADAM SMITH

Believe Enough Experience Live Man Teaching Wisdom
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
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
ADAM SMITH

Destruction Greatness Nation Poor Privacy
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
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.
ADAM SMITH

Animal Attitude Character Dog Man
In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.
ADAM SMITH

Army Character Military Soldier Stand Trade
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
ADAM SMITH

Family Greatness King Privacy
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
The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
ADAM SMITH

Fair Perfection Right See 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
What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
ADAM SMITH

Consience Happiness Health Man Money
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.
ADAM SMITH

People Possible Tax Treasure
No complaint is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
ADAM SMITH

Complaint Money
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 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
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

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

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It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

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Popular Authors

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