This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
(The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759)
Adam Smith
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Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
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