Adam Smith quotes - page 4

To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature. (Adam Smith)
Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. View quote
Adam Smith
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. View quote
Adam Smith
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. View quote
Adam Smith
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 their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. View quote
Adam Smith
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. View quote
Adam Smith
IV. Every tax ought to be contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state. View quote
Adam Smith
The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. View quote
Adam Smith
There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. View quote
Adam Smith
Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher's-meat. A pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher's-meat at fourpence. The small quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the freest importation. View quote
Adam Smith
When the act of navigation was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. ... It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. They are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. National animosity at that particular time aimed at the very same object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England. (Adam Smith)
In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been eminent in that profession? View quote
Adam Smith
The Hudson's Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company. View quote
Adam Smith
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. View quote
Adam Smith
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. View quote
Adam Smith
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good. View quote
Adam Smith
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. View quote
Adam Smith
Defense is superior to opulence. View quote
Adam Smith
The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects. View quote
Adam Smith
Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself. View quote
Adam Smith
The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination. (Adam Smith)
Every man lives by exchanging. View quote
Adam Smith
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. View quote
Adam Smith
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse. View quote
Adam Smith
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. View quote
Adam Smith