The danger in every period of history is lest we take our own age as the term in institutional evolution.

Private enterprise has the sanction of prescription; but since the Industrial Revolution the chief lesson we have had to learn is the unsatisfactory character of that title.

History is an unenviable record of bad metaphysics used to defend obsolete systems.

It took almost a century after the publication of the _Wealth of Nations_ for men to realize that its axioms represented the experience of a definite time.

Smith thought of freedom in the terms most suitable to his generation and stated them with a largeness of view which remains impressive even at a century's distance.
But nothing is more certain in the history of political philosophy than that the problem of freedom changes with each age.