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Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.

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
Individual
Good
Serves
Economics
Ambition
Common

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China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.
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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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Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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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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A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.
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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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The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.
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All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
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A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six he might like to have it but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.
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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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Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
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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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What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
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The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.
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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.
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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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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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With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.
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