Quotes from Adam Smith

In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon the same level, and the beggar who suns himself by the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion, than that of a man of meaner condition.

A nation is not made welthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.

I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.

It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit.

The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour.

The man who indulges us in this natural passion, who invites us into his heart, who, as it were, sets open the gates of his breast to us, seems to exercise a species of hospitality more delightful than any other. No man, who is in ordinary good temper, can fail of pleasing, if he has the courage to utter his real sentiments as he feels them, and because he feels them.

To superficial minds, the vices of the great seem at all times agreeable.

The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives.

The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading, and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires.

To those who have been accustomed to the possession, or even to the hope of public admiration, all other pleasures sicken and decay. Of all the discarded statesmen who for their own ease have studied to get the better of ambition, and to despise those honours which they could no longer arrive at, how few have been able to succeed?

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

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations 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.

When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble?

I am a beau only in my books.

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.

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased;

In the common degree of the moral, there is no virtue. Virtue is excellence.

No society can flourish of which the greater part is poor and miserable

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

Nadie ha visto nunca a un perro hacer un intercambio justo y deliberado de un hueso por otro con otro perro. Nadie ha visto a un animal que, con gestos y sonidos naturales, indique a otro: esto es mío y esto es tuyo; estoy dispuesto a darte esto a cambio de eso

Though those different plans were, perhaps, first introduced by the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men, without any regard to, or foresight of, their consequences upon the general welfare of the society;