Adam Smith Quotes

56 quotes in 896 categories

• Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
• I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
• 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…
• Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
• 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…
• This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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,…
• 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,…
• 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…
• The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most…
• Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.
• Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed,…
• 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…
• 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…
• What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
• 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…
• 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…
• 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…

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