In Public, As Well As In Private

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.

It Is Not From The Benevolence Of The Butcher, The Brewer, Or The Baker, That We Expect Our Dinner, But From Regard To Their Own Interest. We Address Ourselves, Not To Their Humanity But To Their Self-love, And Never Talk To Them Of Our Own Necessities But Of Their Advantages. Nobody But A Beggar Chooses To Depend Chiefly Upon The Benevolence Of His Fellow Citizens.

Every Faculty In One Man Is The Measure By Which He Judges Of The Like Faculty In Another. I Judge Of Your Sight By My Sight, Of Your Ear By My Ear, Of Your Reason By My Reason, Of Your Resentment By My Resentment, Of Your Love By My Love. I Neither Have, Nor Can Have, Any Other Way Of Judging About Them.

How Selfish Soever Man May Be Supposed, There Are Evidently Some Principles In His Nature, Which Interest Him In The Fortune Of Others, And Render Their Happiness Necessary To Him, Though He Derives Nothing From It, Except The Pleasure Of Seeing It.

Among Civilized And Thriving Nations, On The Contrary, Though A Great Number Of People Do No Labor At All, Many Of Whom Consume The Produce Of Ten Times, Frequently Of A Hundred Times More Labour Than The Greater Part Of Those Who Work; Yet The Produce Of The Whole Labour Of The Society Is So Great, That All Are Often Abundantly Supplied, And A Workman, Even Of The Lowest And Poorest Order, If He Is Frugal And Industrious, May Enjoy A Greater Share Of The Necessaries And Conveniencies Of Life Than It Is Possible For Any Savage To Acquire.