Adam Smith Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Adam Smith
Adam Smith Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Adam Smith on Wise Famous Quotes.
To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.
A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
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.
It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.
That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
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.
The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.
The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
But they are commonly more distinguished by their superiority in the latter than in the former. Their
An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.
In all the different employments of stock, the ordinary rate of profit varies more or less with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns.
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.
Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.
The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.
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.
Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.
But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.
It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.
The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion, than that of a man of meaner condition.
Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.
The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives.
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity: ...
The want of parsimony, in time of peace, imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When
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.
The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster.
By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound
I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
What is the work of one man, in a rude state of society, being generally that of several in an improved one.
The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do.
The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.
The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.
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.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.
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.
The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies.
Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary.