A Quote by Adam Smith

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. — © Adam Smith
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.
Now we live in a time where the public and the private are completely fused and there isn't such a great distinction. We know our private lives are constantly made public. With Facebook and Twitter there isn't such a desire, it feels, to keep things private.
I think the problem is, if we foreclose any public justice, then we cut off the virtuous cycle that's represented by law, where there are public decisions which then deter misconduct in the future. We need to have both. We need to have private dispute sy-, systems, and we need to have public dispute systems.
Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.
The passions do very often give birth to others of a nature most contrary to their own. Thus avarice sometimes brings forth prodigality, and prodigality avarice; a man's resolution is very often the effect of levity, and his boldness that of cowardice and fear.
In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility.
Everything I have is a private company. And even though a public company's a great thing, it's great for financing and all of the stuff you need to do. I'm not answering to anybody but my wife and my children and the people who work for me, and my partners.
[Veterans] have been treated very badly.That includes - veterans' choice so veterans can either attend a public V.A. facility or if they have to wait online like they've been doing, sometimes for as much as seven days and then still not get proper care, they'll go to a private medical center or they'll go to a private or public or something, they will go outside .they'll go to a private doctor, they'll go to a private hospital, they'll go to a public hospital. We're going to get them care and we're going to pay for their - that care.
One of the things about the modern world is that the public and the private - which is not the same as the public and the personal - but the public and the private... it's very, very much harder than it used to be to have things that are private and things that are public.
I am in favor of a foreign policy that will cultivate relations of peace with all nations, and I will never give my influence, either as a private citizen or a public servant, for war, so long as it can be honorably avoided.
In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.
As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care.
[Imeachable conduct is] misconduct by public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
We often ask our citizens to split their public and private selves, telling them in effect that it is fine to be religious in private, but there is something askew when those private beliefs become the basis for public action.
Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.
Though they control scores of industrial, commercial, mining and tourist corporations, not one bears the name Rothschild. Being private partnerships, the family houses never need to, and never do, publish a single public balance sheet, or any other report of their financial condition.
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