Quotes from Adam Smith

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow.

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 property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.

The game women play is men.

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.

A sketch of a man facing to the right.

A true party-man hates and despises candour.

Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.

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

Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.

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. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.

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