A Quote by Adam Smith

Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good. — © Adam Smith
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
Individual ambition is undoubtedly a strong motive in student work, but there is such a thing among students everywhere as ambition for others, call it class spirit, esprit de corps, good fellowship, or good will to men.
What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty; and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.
The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products.
Pure community is a matter of no interest to any will; but a community which pursues a common good is of supreme interest to all wills; and what we have here said is that whatever the nature of that common good ... it must contain the development of individual powers, as a prior condition for all other goods.
Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.
I talked on my blog recently about "uncommon sense." Common sense is called "common" because it reflects cultural consensus. It's common sense to get a good job and save for retirement. But I think we all also have an "uncommon sense," an individual voice that tells us what we're meant to do.
I don't know many ambition- ridden people who really enjoy themselves. Even success doesn't seem to still the insatiable, gnawing hunger of their ambition. Ambition is a good gift, but it cannot be all.
To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country.
The common good and the individual good rarely coincide.
Politics, according to the Social Doctrine of the Church, is one of the highest forms of charity, because it serves the common good. I cannot wash my hands, eh? We all have to give something!
When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.
We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universalthat error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.
The horseman serves the horse, The neat-herd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'Tis the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind, Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.
Security is something that serves Israeli interests and Palestinian interests. You have a common threat and you have a common enemy and it's important to deal with that as partners.
God only knows we need a great role model as a leader who is more leader than they are male or female, who is more about their mission that serves everyone than about ego and personal ambition that only serves them.
I did study religion at Northwestern, and it was a very interesting time for me because I think it was the beginning of my personal journey in this understanding of the purpose that religion serves in our culture and in our individual lives. It serves to ground us and be our moral compass.
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