Quote

That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.

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
Able
Competition
Branch
Come
Private
Stock
Trade
Branches
Sort
Foreign
Adventurers
Open
Fairs
Adventurer
Company
Fair
Joint
Experience
Contrary
Joints
Seems
Carry
Successfully

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The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, capable not only of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting 100 impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.
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The game women play is men.
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The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
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Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
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Defense is superior to opulence.
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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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There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
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Thus the labour of a manufacture adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his masters profits. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.
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China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.
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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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Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.
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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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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition . . . is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.
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Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
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A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
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Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
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Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.
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The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
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