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Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.

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
Politics
Nations
Though
Political
Prodigality
Sometimes
Misconduct
Great
Impoverished
Never
Private
Public

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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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In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.
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Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
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The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
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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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The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.
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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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Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.
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The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.
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Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.
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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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As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
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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 world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
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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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Defense is superior to opulence.
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