Quote

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.

Adam Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Adam Smith
Age: 67 †
Born: 1723
Born: June 16
Died: 1790
Died: July 17
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lang Toun
Life
Proper
Rum
Extremely
Commodities
Universal
Tobacco
Therefore
Taxation
Subjects
Commodity
Objects
Consumption
Almost
Sugar
Become
Nowhere
Necessaries

More quotes by Adam Smith

Image
Have lots of experiments, but make sure they're strategically focused.
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
Every man lives by exchanging.
Adam Smith
Image
To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.
Adam Smith
Image
He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
Adam Smith
Image
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.
Adam Smith
Image
Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
Adam Smith
Image
In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
Adam Smith
Image
It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
Adam Smith
Image
By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound
Adam Smith
Image
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
Adam Smith
Image
That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
Adam Smith
Image
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
Adam Smith
Image
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.
Adam Smith
Image
The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.
Adam Smith
Image
Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.
Adam Smith