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An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations With a Life of the Author: Also a View of the Doctrine of Smith, Compared with that of the French Economists, with a Method of Facilitating the Study of His Works, from the French of M. Jariner

Book by Adam Smith · 8 quotes · Common, Economics, Masters

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An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations With a Life of the Author: Also a View of the Doctrine of Smith, Compared with that of the French Economists, with a Method of Facilitating the Study of His Works, from the French of M. Jariner Quotes

“Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.”

“The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.”

“Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.”

“It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.”

“Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.”

“In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.”

“Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.”

“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.”