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I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

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
Government
Done
Affected
Much
Investing
Good
Economics
Never
Trade
Public
Known

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The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.
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Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
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But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.
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To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.
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Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
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In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.
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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.
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Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.
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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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The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.
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It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
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Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.
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