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In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.

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
Military
Predominates
Character
Laborer
Every
Laborers
Militia
Soldier
Army
Standing
Artificer
Arms
Tradesman

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The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.
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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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Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
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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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All money is a matter of belief.
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The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.
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In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.
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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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Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
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We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.
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Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
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Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.
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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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Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.
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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.
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The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.
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It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
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Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.
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Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.
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