Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

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

Man, an animal that makes bargains.

Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.

Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.

The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.