Adam Smith Quotes About Taxes

Quotes about: Taxes

• Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

  Adam Smith

  Peace, Justice, Littles

  Adam Smith, comte Germain Garnier, Dugald Stewart (1835). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.96

• Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

  Adam Smith

  Government, Liberty, Pay

  Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.362

• To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.

  Adam Smith

  Liberty, Would Be, Examination

  Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.405

• Both ground- rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore, perhaps the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.

  Adam Smith

  Real, Land, People

  Adam Smith (1869). “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Volume 2”, p.437

• Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance.

  Adam Smith

  Philosophy, People, Political

• Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State.

  Adam Smith

  People, Pockets, Littles

  Adam Smith (2010). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.499, Cosimo, Inc.

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