Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.
Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
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.
Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government.
Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty.
Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound.
But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.
All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.