Resentment 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 SmithRead
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The accumulation of wealth often leads to social disparities.
Adam Smith's quote suggests that significant wealth tends to create a divide within society, where the rich possess far more than the poor, resulting in inequality. This remark reflects on the economic structures that can perpetuate such imbalances, emphasizing the social implications of property ownership and wealth distribution.
Themes
PropertyInequalityWealthSocietyEconomics
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about wealth distribution during a seminar on economics.
More from Adam Smith
All quotes βIt 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 SmithRead
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
Adam SmithRead
The 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 SmithRead
Defense is superior to opulence.
Adam SmithRead
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Adam SmithRead
Similar quotes
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.
Dale CarnegieRead
Though they go mad they shall be sane, though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.
Dylan ThomasRead
Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event ... For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.
Walter LippmannRead
War is never a lasting solution for any problem.
A. P. J. Abdul KalamRead