Quotes About Wealth

No society can flourish of which the greater part is poor and miserable

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

When the landlord, annuitant, or monied man, has a greater revenue than what he judges sufficient to maintain his own family, he employs either the whole or a part of the surplus in maintaining one or more menial servants. Increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of those servants.

Wages, profit, and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue, as well as of all exchangeable value. All other revenue is ultimately derived from someone or other of these.

A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness.

The extent of the market, therefore, must for a long time be in proportion to the riches and populousness of that country, and consequently their improvement must always be posterior to the improvement of that country.

The man who employs either his labour or his stock in a grater variety of ways than his situation renders necessary, can never hurt his neighbour by underselling him. He may hurt himself, and he generally does so. Jack of all trades will never be rich, says the proverb. But the law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situations they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislator can do.

mercantilism

Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do not labour at all, many of whom consume the produce

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

Pero aunque el país más pobre, a pesar de la inferioridad de sus cultivos, puede en alguna medida rivalizar con el rico en la baratura y calidad de sus granos, no podrá competir con sus industrias, al menos en las manufacturas que se ajustan bien al suelo, clima y situación del país rico.

Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed

gran multiplicación de la producción de todos los diversos oficios, derivada de la división del trabajo, da lugar, en una sociedad bien gobernada, a esa riqueza universal que se extiende hasta las clases más bajas del pueblo.

wages of labour, the profits of stock, or the rent of land.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despite, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

that prevailed before his time. National wealth was measured in terms of a country's stock

Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.

The great affair, we always find, is to get money.

To attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils.

La libra de moneda escocesa contenía, desde los tiempos de Alejandro I hasta los de Robert Bruce, una libra de plata del mismo peso y ley que la libra esterlina inglesa.

the accommodation of a European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.