Adam Smith Quotes

A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

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.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

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.

A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.Most government is by the rich for the rich. Government comprises a large part of the organized injustice in any society, ancient or modern.Civil government, insofar as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, and for the defence of those who have property against those who have none.

Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.

There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.

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.

As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.

Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.

By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

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.

All money is a matter of belief.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.