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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

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
Like
Naturally
Proportion
Economics
Animals
Animal
Means
Mean
Subsistence
Men
Multiply

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Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
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It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
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Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
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Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
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I have no faith in political arithmetic.
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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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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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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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Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
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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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The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
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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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Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
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