Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased. – Adam Smith
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts. – Adam Smith
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. – Adam Smith
Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God. – Adam Smith