… is one of my favorites – perhaps my very favorite – from Adam Smith’s supremely quotable 1776 classic, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; specifically, it’s from Book IV, chapter 2, paragraph 10 of that monumental work of scholarship and wisdom:
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
What is Washington, DC, but a nest of such megalomaniacs who suffer incurably from foolish and presumptuous delusions of their own superiority and magnificence?
