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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.

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
People
Asks
Stock
Profitably
Politics
Thinks
Idly
Greater
Laugh
Proposing
Common
Spend
Lent
Two
Laughing
Employ
Part
Question
Prudence
Men
Economy
Sorts
Thinking
Rich
Liberalism

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Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
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To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.
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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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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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All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.
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Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.
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The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
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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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A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third.
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It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.
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I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.
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Defense is superior to opulence.
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The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.
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Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.
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Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State.
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But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.
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The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. ...People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare... On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.
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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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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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Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
Adam Smith