76 Adam Smith Quotes
Adam Smith was a Scottish philosopher, economist and author. He is the key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. He is best known for two classic works, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and the theory of moral sentiments.
Born – June 16, 1723
Died – July 17, 1790 (67)
Nationality – Scottish
Occupation – Economist and Author
Notable work – The wealth of nations and the theory of moral sentiments
“The profusion of government … [has] retarded the natural progress”― Adam Smith
“In the midst of all the exactions of government … It is this effort, protected by law and allowed by liberty to exert itself in the manner that is most advantageous, which has maintained the progress”― Adam Smith
“No human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient [for] the duty of superintending the industry of private people … towards the employment most suitable to the interest of the society”― Adam Smith
“Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good”― Adam Smith
“Those unproductive hands … may consume so great a share … that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate … this violent and forced encroachment”― Adam Smith
“The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination”― Adam Smith
“There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people”― Adam Smith
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect to eat our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”― Adam Smith
“What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom”― Adam Smith
“The agents of [government] regard the wealth of their master as inexhaustible; are careless at what price they buy … at what price they sell”― Adam Smith
“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”― Adam Smith
“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”― Adam Smith
“After all the proper subjects of taxation have been exhausted, if the exigencies of the state still continue to require new taxes, they must be imposed upon improper ones”― Adam Smith
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience”― Adam Smith
“Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another”― Adam Smith
“Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back”― Adam Smith
“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion”― Adam Smith
“Let us not, however, upon this account rashly conclude that she is capable of supporting any burden, nor even be too confident that she could support, without great distress, a burden a little greater than what has already been laid upon her”― Adam Smith
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition”― Adam Smith
“A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it’s people.”― Adam Smith
“As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.”― Adam Smith
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent”― Adam Smith
“We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.”― Adam Smith
“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”― Adam Smith
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”― Adam Smith
“When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.”― Adam Smith
“In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake; the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself.”― Adam Smith
“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself”― Adam Smith
“Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.”― Adam Smith
“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.”― Adam Smith
“In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.”― Adam Smith
“Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.”― Adam Smith
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable”― Adam Smith
“Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.”― Adam Smith
“The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.”― Adam Smith
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”― Adam Smith
“Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.”― Adam Smith
“The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction.”― Adam Smith
“Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.”― Adam Smith
“Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.”― Adam Smith
“The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.”― Adam Smith
“The virtue of frugality lies in a middle between avarice and profusion, of which the one consists in an excess, the other in a defect of the proper attention to the objects of self–interest.”― Adam Smith
“The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of the employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced.”― Adam Smith
“It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.”― Adam Smith
“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.”― Adam Smith
“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.”― Adam Smith
“The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.”― Adam Smith
“In reality, during the continuance of any one regulated proportion, between the respective values of the different values of the different metals in the coin, the value of the most precious metal regulates the value of the whole coin.”― Adam Smith
“The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.”― Adam Smith
“In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.”― Adam Smith
“A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.”― Adam Smith
“However selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”― Adam Smith
“The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe.”― Adam Smith
“Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.”― Adam Smith
“A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.”― Adam Smith
“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.”― Adam Smith
“With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.”― Adam Smith
“A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.”― Adam Smith
“We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workman. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.”― Adam Smith
“Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.”― Adam Smith
“Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.”― Adam Smith
“A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands.”― Adam Smith
“The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.”― Adam Smith
“When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.”― Adam Smith
“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise, or, at least, neglect persons of poor or mean conditions… is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments”― Adam Smith
“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality”― Adam Smith
“Never complain of that of which it is at all times within your power to rid”― Adam Smith
“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.”― Adam Smith
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged”― Adam Smith
“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.”― Adam Smith
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”― Adam Smith
“Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.”― Adam Smith
“On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.”― Adam Smith
“All money is a matter of belief.”― Adam Smith
“The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.”― Adam Smith
