Authors:
  • To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 7 (1776). Other quotation compilations have this ending with "whose government is influenced by shopkeepers," but the first edition reads as above. See Napoleon 5; Josiah Tucker 1