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Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

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
Patriotic
Libertarian
Cruelty
Guilty
Innocent
Mercy
Government

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That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
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No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
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The division of labour was limited by the extent of the market
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In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.
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Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.
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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.
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When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.
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This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
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In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
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The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
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Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
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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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By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound
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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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Wonder... and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.
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The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.
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All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.
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Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
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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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