Have lots of experiments, but make sure they're strategically focused.

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

The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

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.

The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.

Man, an animal that makes bargains.