Adam Smith

Quotes

• “Smith distinguishes with great sophistication the different kinds of reasons people have in taking an interest in the li...”
• “The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graz...”
• “In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of thos...”
• “Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, ...”
• “To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make...would oblige me greatly: I k...”
• “The man who employs either his labour or his stock in a grater variety of ways than his situation renders necessary, can...”
• “I perfectly agree with your Lordship too, that to crush the Industry of so great and so fine a province of the empire, i...”
• “POLITICAL economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: fi...”
• “The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only loa...”
• “The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of ...”
• “The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has su...”
• “Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is...”
• “The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their ...”
• “The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his own private interests should be sacrificed to the public inte...”
• “Smith's claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the m...”
• “China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most po...”
• “Adam Smith discovered a remarkable property of a competitive market economy. Under perfect competition and with no marke...”
• “Now, sir, I stand here in the land where Adam Smith was born, the parent and patriarch of political economy-the man who ...”
• “When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of the...”
• “Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, b...”
• “The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntar...”
• “It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; ...”
• “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby ...”
• “It may indeed be doubted, whether butcher's meat is any where a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the ...”
• “When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn ...”
• “This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons o...”
• “Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to str...”
• “The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for i...”
• “To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ord...”
• “Such taxes [upon the necessaries of life], when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenn...”
• “In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to ...”
• “Economic theory as derived from Adam Smith assumes first that homo economicus acts with perfect optimality on complete i...”
• “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is b...”
• “[T]he simple fact is, of course, that in normal trade all parties gain; there exist mutual gains from trade. The great c...”
• “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 s...”
• “To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first appear a project fit only...”
• “Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are alw...”
• “To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in...”
• “If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so few could be imported, that the grazing tr...”
• “A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most ...”
• “In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. Th...”
• “Smith had no illusion that this would be easy to do, nor did he suffer from the delusion that such an exercise would, in...”
• “The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. ...”
• “Lands for the purposes of pleasure and magnificence, parks, gardens, public walks, &c. possessions which are every where...”
• “William Ewart Gladstone, speech in Dundee (29 October 1890), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches...”
• “His capital is continually going from him in one shape, and returning to him in another, and it is only by means of such...”
• “The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects diff...”
• “I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in prop...”
• “For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the con...”
• “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the for...”