The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.

But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.

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

Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.