Top 206 Quotes & Sayings by Adam Smith
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish economist Adam Smith.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.
Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
Defense is superior to opulence.
All money is a matter of belief.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.
Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.
The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
I have no faith in political arithmetic.
The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.
The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.
The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.
The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.
In raising the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods, both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits; they are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.Most government is by the rich for the rich. Government comprises a large part of the organized injustice in any society, ancient or modern.Civil government, insofar as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, and for the defence of those who have property against those who have none.
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.
Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.
The game women play is men.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
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