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Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
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
Ought
Pretensions
Particular
Pretension
Almost
Wretched
Fear
Employed
Order
Smallest
Government
Instrument
Never
Instruments
Men
Cases
More quotes by Adam Smith
It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
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Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
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Every man lives by exchanging.
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All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.
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On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
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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.
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Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.
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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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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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I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
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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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With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
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This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
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Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
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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.
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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
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Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
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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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Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
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We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.
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