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Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

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
Rich
Individualism
Poor
Libertarian
Reality
Civil
Government
Defense
Property
None
Security
Economy
Instituted

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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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As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.
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The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.
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Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
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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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What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
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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.
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Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.
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This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
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I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
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Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
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On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
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To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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I am a beau in nothing but my books.
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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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There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
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Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
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The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.
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