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Quotes of Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneering political economist. He is a major contributor to the modern perception of economics. One of the key figures of the intellectual movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment, he is known primarily as the author of two treatises: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter was one of the earliest attempts to systematically study the historical development of industry and commerce in Europe, as well as a sustained attack on the doctrines of mercantilism. Smith's work helped to create the modern academic discipline of economics and provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism.
- 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.
- All money is a matter of belief.
- 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.
- Defense is superior to opulence.
- 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.
- Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
- Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
- I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
- 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.
- Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things.
- 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.
- Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
- Mankind are animals that makes bargains, no other animal does this.
- No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
- No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
- On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
- 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.
- Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
- 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 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.
- The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
- 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.
- 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.
- This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
- To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
- 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 that is governed by shopkeepers.
- Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
- What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
- With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.