01c. 1748 ADCommerce and manufactures can seldom flourish long in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice, in which the people do not feel themselves secure in the possession of their property, in which the faith of contracts is not supported by law, and in which the authority of the state is not supposed to be regularly employed in enforcing the payment of debts from all those who are able to pay. Commerce and manufactures, inshort, can seldom flourish in any state in which there is not a certain degree of confidence in the justice of government.Adam Smith / quote ↗
02c. 1748 ADA highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example, may in most cases be both made and maintained by a small toll upon the carriages which make use of them: a harbour, by moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of the shipping which load or unload in it. The coinage, another institution for facilitating commerce, in many countries, not only defrays its own expense, but affords a small revenue or seignorage to the sovereign. The post-office, another institution for the same purpose, over and above defraying its own expense, affords in almost all countries a very considerable revenue to the sovereign. When the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them. It seems scarce possible to invent a more equitable way of maintaining such works.Adam Smith / quote ↗
03c. 1748 ADVirtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.Adam Smith / quote ↗
04c. 1748 ADWhat is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.Adam Smith / quote ↗
05c. 1748 ADAll 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.Adam Smith / quote ↗
07c. 1748 ADI have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow.Adam Smith / quote ↗
08c. 1748 ADHow selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.Adam Smith / quote ↗
09c. 1748 ADBy pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.Adam Smith / quote ↗
10c. 1748 ADWhat can be added to the happiness of man who is in health out of debt and has a clear conscience?Adam Smith / quote ↗
12c. 1748 ADIt 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.Adam Smith / quote ↗
13c. 1748 ADPoor 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.Adam Smith / quote ↗
14c. 1748 ADTo feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.Adam Smith / quote ↗
15c. 1748 ADResentment 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.Adam Smith / quote ↗
16c. 1748 ADAdventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.Adam Smith / quote ↗
18c. 1748 ADWhat can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?Adam Smith / quote ↗
19c. 1748 ADI have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.Adam Smith / quote ↗
20c. 1748 ADThe 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.Adam Smith / quote ↗
21c. 1748 ADThe propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.Adam Smith / quote ↗
22c. 1748 ADGreat ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.Adam Smith / quote ↗
23c. 1748 ADThis is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.Adam Smith / quote ↗
24c. 1748 ADLabour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.Adam Smith / quote ↗
