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Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

Adam Smith

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Adam Smith
Age: 67 †
Born: 1723
Born: June 16
Died: 1790
Died: July 17
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lang Toun
Doe
Exchanges
Men
Bargains
Bones
Dog
Animal
Funny
Makes
Another

More quotes by Adam Smith

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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.
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Defense is superior to opulence.
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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.
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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.
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A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six he might like to have it but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.
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Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.
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Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.
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The game women play is men.
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The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.
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When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.
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It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.
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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.
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The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
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I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
Adam Smith
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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.
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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.
Adam Smith
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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.
Adam Smith
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
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Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
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