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Defense is superior to opulence.

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
Superiors
Defense
Economy
Opulence
Superior

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There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
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Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
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Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
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Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
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Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.
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Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
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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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To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.
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When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty.
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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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This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
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Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.
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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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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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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 property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.
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The game women play is men.
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The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
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All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed.
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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.
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