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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.
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
Every
Subjects
Ought
Support
Respective
Possible
Abilities
State
Contribute
Ability
Proportion
States
Nearly
Government
Towards
More quotes by Adam Smith
The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
Adam Smith
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance.
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Defense is superior to opulence.
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Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.
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That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
Adam Smith
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
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The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
Adam Smith
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.
Adam Smith
When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.
Adam Smith
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
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That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is most often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.
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Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
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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
A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
Adam Smith
Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.
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.
Adam Smith
Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.
Adam Smith
Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.
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