Quote #7

The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan [sic] accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects in Europe: in manufacturing art and industry, China and Indostan, though inferior, seem not to be much inferior to any part of Europe. The money price of the greater part of manufactures, therefore, will naturally be much lower in those great empires than it is any-where in Europe.

More from Adam Smith

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