Adam Smith Quotations

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

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

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, is the one that must rule all observation.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

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.

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.

The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.

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 be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

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 to this certainty.

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.

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

No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.

On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.

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.

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

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 ambition.

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.

To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

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.

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, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

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.

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

What we're doing here is completely in line with the principles of fair use. We think this will help more users discover their books, and buy their books.

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.

This program will help users discover more books, publishers sell more books and authors to ultimately write more books.

Give credit to their goalie as he had some good saves.

Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things.

Such is the delicacy of man alone, that no object is produced to his liking. He finds that in everything there is need for improvement.... The whole industry of human life is employed not in procuring the supply of our three humble necessities, food, clothes and lodging, but in procuring the conveniences of it according to the nicety and delicacy of our tastes.

Mankind are animals that makes bargains, no other animal does this.

That was probably our best game of the year.

We're building this area between Milwaukee and Chicago as the best of both worlds. We're just excited to bring another high-profile event here.

We are not ruling out that if a program is performing poorly, it doesn't get funding.

We don't have permission to do that. We're a finding tool, like a digital card catalog.

We want to improve coordination and deliver services as efficiently as possible.

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.

Have lots of experiments, but make sure they're strategically focused.

Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, is consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess ... 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.

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.

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.

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.

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer.

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.

A sketch of a man facing to the right.

The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.

Man, an animal that makes bargains.

The game women play is men.

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.

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity:...

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.

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.

The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.

It may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meet is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butchers' meat.

The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.

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.

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.

An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

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.

When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty.

Wonder... and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.

Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you.

Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back

Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we form any conception of what are his sensations...His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have this adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.

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 the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

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

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 unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

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.

Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations [that is, unions or colluding organizations] of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual price.

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate 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.

The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.

The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit. In the great chess board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.

Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.

It is important to understand that there are two separate battles taking place in Iraq: there is the political rift between the Sunnis, Shia and the Kurds and there is a foreign extremist group - ISIS - trying to take advantage of the political environment through violence. If the Iraqis can resolve their political differences, it will be far more difficult for ISIS to thrive. Moving forward, we should continue to evaluate additional steps to help combat ISIS as we see what the Iraqis are willing to do politically, but we must also firmly guard against mission creep.

But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies.

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.

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.

The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. ...People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare... On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.

All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed.

By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.

The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.

It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.