It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly,….

Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them..

All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist..

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love..

Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune..

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 w….

Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the ….

Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back.

It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be ….

The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating..

The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin..

A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can h….

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 bri….

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery..

All money is a matter of belief..

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity….

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that ….

I am a beau in nothing but my books..

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts..

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable..

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when….