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Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.

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
Manufactures
Secrets
Kept
Trade
Capable
Longer

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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.
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As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.
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It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.
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A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
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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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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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When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.
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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.
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The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.
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It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
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I am a beau in nothing but my books.
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Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.
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Defense is superior to opulence.
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The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.
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But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.
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I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
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The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditiona desire which?comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.
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Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.
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We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.
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