“There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”

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.

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

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?

In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.

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.

The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.

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.

Have lots of experiments, but make sure they’re strategically focused.