Malcolm Taylor > Malcolm's Quotes

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest.

Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations