Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.

In raising the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods, both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits; they are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

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.

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

He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention

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