Government By Adam Smith Quotes & Sayings

Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it. — Adam Smith

It's hard for these athletes to stay healthy. They are constantly being bombarded with unhealthy advertising. Peer pressure can override the body's demand for health. Being healthy goes beyond 'not being sick' (where all lab reports indicate health), to feeling optimistic, energetic, strong and happy with their bodies. Teaching them to take charge of their bodies is a job of coaching. Help them gain discipline in conditioning, nutrition and attitude/emotional control. — John Kessel

Life is full of joys and sorrows, much of it our own making. Sadly, the West has voted time and time again for bigger government, more inflation, higher taxes and excessive regulation - all policies that have kept us from Adam Smith's vision of an opulent society. — Mark Skousen

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. — Adam Smith

Shaker Heights, Ohio is a predominately white neighborhood. It was when I moved in, and it still is. — Kym Whitley

For years I lived rather medicated and muted - I did not possess language to describe my vague feelings of unhappiness, to politicize it, to attempt to transcend it. — Kate Zambreno

Hate is always a clash between our spirit and someone else's body. — Cesare Pavese

The man of system ... is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it ... He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. — Adam Smith

For Burke, almost everything that makes life worthwhile is a result of society, its inherited codes, knowledge, and institutions. These goods are fragile, and when they are destroyed, the result is human misery ... Among the greatest of man's needs, according to Burke, was the need for society and government to provide "a sufficient restraint upon their passions." As far back as his Vindication of Natural Society, Burke had argued that the destruction of inherited institutions and cultural practices would result not in natural harmony, but in barbarism. For Burke, as for Adam Smith, man is preeminently social man who realizes himself morally only under the tutelage of society. (p. 131) — Jerry Z. Muller

She doesn't want to think of that woman, not now. She's just one more person who hasn't kept her promise; just one more person who hasn't returned to Harriet. — Helen Humphreys

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. — Adam Smith

A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.Most government is by the rich for the rich. Government comprises a large part of the organized injustice in any society, ancient or modern.Civil government, insofar as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, and for the defence of those who have property against those who have none. — Adam Smith

A highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example, may in most cases be both made and maintained by a small toll upon the carriages which make use of them: a harbour, by moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of the shipping which load or unload in it. The coinage, another institution for facilitating commerce, in many countries, not only defrays its own expense, but affords a small revenue or seignorage to the sovereign. The post-office, another institution for the same purpose, over and above defraying its own expense, affords in almost all countries a very considerable revenue to the sovereign.
When the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them. It seems scarce possible to invent a more equitable way of maintaining such works. — Adam Smith

There's no "right way" to garden, only what suits each person and place. — Janet Macunovich

My goal was never to sell many records. — Chuck Mangione

Both the fragmentation of power and the conflicting government policies are rooted in the political realities of a democratic system that operates by enacting detailed and specific legislation. Such a system tends to give undue political power to small groups that have highly concentrated interests, to give greater weight to obvious, direct, and immediate effects of government action than to possibly more important but concealed, indirect, and delayed effects, to set in motion a process that sacrifices the general interest to serve special interests, rather than the other way around. There is, as it were, an invisible hand in politics that operates in precisely the opposite direction to Adam Smith's invisible hand. Individuals who intend only to promote the general interest are led by the invisible political hand to promote a special interest that they had no intention to promote. — Milton Friedman

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master. — Adam Smith

Laissez Faire, laissez passer. Let it be, let it pass. The phrase is not readily translatable. It was widely used by the Physiocrats in urging freedom from government interference and was adopted by Adam Smith. — Francois Quesnay

As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state. — Adam Smith

At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. — Oscar Wilde

Some social phobics find even positive attention to be aversive. Think of the young child who bursts into tears when guests sing "Happy Birthday" to her at a party - or of Elfriede Jelinek afraid to pick up her Nobel Prize. Social attention - even positive, supportive attention - activates the neurocircuitry of fear. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Calling positive attention to yourself can incite jealousy or generate new rivalries. — Scott Stossel

The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public — Adam Smith

Commerce and manufactures can seldom flourish long in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice, in which the people do not feel themselves secure in the possession of their property, in which the faith of contracts is not supported by law, and in which the authority of the state is not supposed to be regularly employed in enforcing the payment of debts from all those who are able to pay. Commerce and manufactures, in
short, can seldom flourish in any state in which there is not a certain degree of confidence in the justice of government. — Adam Smith

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. — Adam Smith

Even Adam Smith's "invisible hand" occasionally needs a slap on the wrist. — Bill Mech

There are many traditionally published authors who have hated the cover their publisher's decided on. Or the title or the marketing or the advertising. But there was nothing they could do about it. — M.J. Rose

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. — Adam Smith

Every generation has their favorite Spider-Man television show. — Jeph Loeb

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities. — Adam Smith

When we see an effect happen always in the same manner, we infer that it takes place by a natural necessity; as, for instance, that the sun will rise to morrow; but nature often deceives us, and will not submit to its own rules. — Blaise Pascal

Reigning doctrines are often called a "double standard".The term is misleading.It is more accurate to describe them as a single standard,clear and unmistakable,the standard that Adam Smith called the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind: ...All for ourselves,and nothing for other people." Much has changed since his day,but the vile maxim flourishes. — Noam Chomsky

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. — Adam Smith

The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition ... is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration. — Adam Smith

Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. — Adam Smith