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The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.

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
Secret
Great
Proper
Vanity
Direct
Objects
Education

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The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
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By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
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All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.
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A true party-man hates and despises candour.
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It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be taxed.
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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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.
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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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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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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.
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The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.
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