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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.

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
Wells
Apology
Well
Frequently
Great
Folly
Private
Perhaps
Wealth
Public
May
Admitted

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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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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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Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
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A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.
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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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An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.
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Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back
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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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Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
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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.
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With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
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I have no faith in political arithmetic.
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But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies.
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The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe.
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