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The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
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
Moral
Universal
Sentiments
Powerful
Conditions
Inequality
Poor
Cause
Despise
Persons
Wealth
Neglect
Mean
Least
Corruption
Great
Causes
Condition
Almost
Admire
Rich
Worship
Disposition
More quotes by Adam Smith
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.
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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.
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Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.
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I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
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Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
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Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, is consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.
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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.
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An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.
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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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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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On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
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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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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
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