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
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.
In practice
In a discussion about wealth distribution during a seminar on economics.
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.
It 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.
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
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.
Defense is superior to opulence.
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.
You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.
Who knows when the end is reached? Death may be the beginning of life. How do I know that love of life is not a delusion after all? How do I know that he who dreads to die is as a child who has lost the way and cannot find his way home? How do I know that the dead repent of having previously clung to life?
Society is just a structure with no soul. The soul is of the individual. One individual outweighs all societies. And, one individual's revolution outweighs all revolutions in the whole of history, because one man can become the womb for God to be reborn.
A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?
I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.
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