No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
From Adam Smith
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
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.
The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
Labour 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.
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
Defense is superior to opulence.
4 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives