Quote

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.

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
Greater
Decay
Though
Stock
Diminution
Natural
Complaining
Decays
Prosperity
Diminishes
Profit
Merchants
Effect
Diminish
Trade
Complain
Effects
Employed

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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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Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, is consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.
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That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is most often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.
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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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Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
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Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
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All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.
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