It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.

I am a beau in nothing but my books.

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.

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.

By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.