Quote #5

China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. It had perhaps, even long before his time, acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire:The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe.

More from Adam Smith

  1. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publ…
  2. China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.
  3. We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this ac…
  4. The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan [sic] accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the riche…
  5. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He w…
  6. The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought n…
  7. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly…
  8. It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, a…

All Adam Smith quotes