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Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.
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
Slavery
Subjects
Master
Pay
Indeed
Liberty
Subject
Cannot
Property
Denotes
Government
Taxes
Badge
Persons
Masters
Badges
Person
Pays
Every
However
More quotes by Adam Smith
In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.
Adam Smith
It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.
Adam Smith
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.
Adam Smith
Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.
Adam Smith
Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.
Adam Smith
Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.
Adam Smith
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.
Adam Smith
The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.
Adam Smith
China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.
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
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.
Adam Smith
Defense is superior to opulence.
Adam Smith
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
Adam Smith
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
Adam Smith
An English university is a sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection after they have been . hunted out of every corner of the world.
Adam Smith
The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.
Adam Smith
The game women play is men.
Adam Smith
Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.
Adam Smith
An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.
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The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.
Adam Smith