In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.
To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.
Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.
Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
An English university is a sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection after they have been. hunted out of every corner of the world.
A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it is enriched by the economic prosperity of its people.
All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed.
Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.
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.
The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.
When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.
The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
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.
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
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...