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The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.
Adam Smith -
The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.
Adam Smith
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The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.
Adam Smith -
The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society.
Adam Smith -
Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.
Adam Smith -
Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.
Adam Smith -
As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.
Adam Smith -
But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.
Adam Smith
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A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
Adam Smith -
III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it.
Adam Smith -
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
Adam Smith -
If a workman can conveniently spare those three halfpence, he buys a pot of porter. If he cannot, he contents himself with a pint, and, as a penny saved is a penny got, he thus gains a farthing by his temperance.
Adam Smith -
No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital.
Adam Smith -
The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.
Adam Smith
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Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.
Adam Smith -
In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been emminent in that profession?
Adam Smith -
II. The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary.
Adam Smith -
This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
Adam Smith -
Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
Adam Smith -
The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only.
Adam Smith
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It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
Adam Smith -
Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.
Adam Smith -
I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
Adam Smith -
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