Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things. – Adam Smith
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. – Adam Smith
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. – Adam Smith
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience? – Adam Smith
The man of the constitutional régime is not a merry-maker, quite the contrary. He is hypocritical, avaricious, and profoundly selfish; whatever question strikes against his brow, his brow rings like a drawer full of big pennies. – Claude Tillier (1801–1844), My Uncle Benjamin: A Humorous, Satirical, and
…existence has become an unreasoning, wild dance around the golden calf, a mad worship of God Mammon. In that dance and in that worship man has sacrificed all his finer qualities of the heart and soul — kindness and justice, honor and manhood, compassion and sympathy with his fellowman. – Alexander Berkman, What Is Communist Anarchism?