No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloth and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

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.

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits... If the project succeeds, they [the profits] are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.

Corn is a necessity, silver only a superfluity.

any new law or regulation of commerce ought always to be listened to with great precaution... It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

Both in ancient Egypt and Indostan, the whole body of the people was divided into different castes... the caste of the farmers and laborers was superior to the castes of merchants and manufacturers... Though both were extremely populous, yet, in years of moderate plenty, they were both able to export great quantities of grains

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

It is love alone that gives worth to all things.

It is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering into ourselves.

The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes

Don’t let yourself be frightened by your own thoughts.

I am more afraid of people terrified of the devil than I am of the devil himself.

Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.

Union is as if in a room there were two large windows through which the light streamed in it enters in different places but it all becomes one.

All the way to heaven is heaven.

Many people are good at talking and bad at understanding,