Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.
The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.
It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.
Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.
But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.
In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.
Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.
In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound
Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.
The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.
The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.
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.
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.
It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.
When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.
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.
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.
The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do.
To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.
The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
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.
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.
It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be taxed.
The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe.
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.
Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.
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.
The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditiona desire which?comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.
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.
It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.