It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures. - Adam Smith

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.