Quotes from Adam Smith

The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public

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

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 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.

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

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.

Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.

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.

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.

Man, an animal that makes bargains.

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

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.

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

Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.

All money is a matter of belief.

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

To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.

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

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.

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