When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain.

On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.

The science of political economy is essentially practical, and applicable to the common business of human life. There are few branches of human knowledge where false views may do more harm, or just views more good.

In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand.

I do not know that any writer has supposed that on this earth man will ultimately be able to live without food.

To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.

No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed.