The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.

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

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.

The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you.

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

I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.