Quote #6

China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

More from Adam Smith

  1. China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in…
  2. 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…
  3. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publ…
  4. The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought n…
  5. We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this ac…
  6. It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, a…
  7. 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…
  8. 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.

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