Quotes About Adam Smith

doctrine of natural liberty. Smith believed that "man's self-interest is God's providence," and held that if government abstained from interfering with free competition, industrial problems would work themselves out and the practical maximum of efficiency would be reached.

A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable. 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. The rent of houses, though it in some respects resembles the rent of land, is in one respect essentially different from it.

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 be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.

In this popular sense, therefore, labour, like commodities, may be said to have a real and a nominal price. Its real price may be said to consist in the quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which are given for it; its nominal price, in the quantity of money. The labourer is rich or poor, is well or ill rewarded, in proportion to the real, not to the nominal price of his labour.

This impossibility of making so complete and entire a separation of all the different branches of labour employed in agriculture, is perhaps the reason why the improvement of the productive powers of labour, in this art, does not always keep pace with their improvement in manufactures.

Public services are never better performed, than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them.

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches; which, in their eye, is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

Human society, when we contemplate it in a certain abstract and philosophical light, appears like a great, an immense machine.

A society governed by consent does not necessarily issue from a social contract, whether actual or implied. It is a society in which dealings between citizens, and between citizens and those in authority, are consensual, in the manner of daily courtesies, games of football, theatrical events or family meals. As Adam Smith made clear, order may emerge from consensual dealings. But it emerges 'by an invisible hand', and not, as a rule, because someone has imposed it. In

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that self-interest can solve this problem. Given a free economy and an impartial rule of law, self-interest leads towards an optimal distribution of resources. Smith

including Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and popularizers such as Archibald Alison, elaborating on sensibility and sympathy as the most important aspects of human psychology. These products of what Henry May calls the Didactic Enlightenment were enormously influential in America. They were heavily represented in the curricula of American colleges, and their ideas influenced everything from the Declaration of Independence to the practice and theory of all of the fine arts.

I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlled by the king and aristocracy. That was essential.

The executives claim that "market forces" determine their salary. However, as Moshe Adler, in his article "Overthrowing the Overpaid," points out, economists David Ricardo and Adam Smith, writing more than two hundred years ago, "concluded that what a person earns is determined not by what that person has produced but by that person's bargaining power.

Adam Smith is misread as being amoral precisely because people don't read his first book, because they don't read 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments.'

Adam Smith would compose the founding text of modern economics— Inquiry Concerning the Wealth of Nations—in a language that was, it is all too easy to forget, a foreign tongue to him.

For Adam Smith, our moral life, as well as our cultural life, is a matter of imagination. The richer the inventory of objects for its diversion, and the deeper our own fellow feeling, the happier we become, but also the more we can perceive happiness in others.

Llama al diezmo que se paga a la Iglesia un impuesto «puramente negativo» pues no genera beneficio alguno ni al propietario, ni al arrendatario, ni al soberano, sólo a la Iglesia (lo que confirma el tibio creyente que era Adam Smith).

I find it ironic that liberals generally embrace Darwin and reject "intelligent design" as the explanation for design and adaptation in the natural world, but they don't embrace Adam Smith as the explanation for design and adaptation in the economic world. They sometimes prefer the "intelligent design" of socialist economies, which often ends in disaster from a utilitarian point of view.

broke now, just wait until the baby boom generation is fully retired. I find it ironic that liberals generally embrace Darwin and reject "intelligent design" as the explanation for design and adaptation in the natural world, but they don't embrace Adam Smith as the explanation for design and adaptation in the economic world. They sometimes prefer the "intelligent design" of socialist economies, which often ends in disaster from a utilitarian point of view.

Me parece irónico que los liberales acepten a Darwin y rechacen el -diseño inteligente- como la explicación del diseño y la adaptación en el mundo natural, pero no aceptan a Adam Smith como la explicación del diseño y la adaptación en el mundo económico. Algunos países a veces prefieren el -diseño inteligente- de las economías socialistas, que en ocasiones suele acabar en desastre desde un punto de vista utilitarista.

Later in the 1700s, the preeminent economist Adam Smith actually wrote The Wealth of Nations in a coffeehouse, after having repeatedly circulated drafts for input among the regulars there. Beyond

Conservatives may worship Adam Smith's 'invisible hand,' but for Obama, the helping hand comes in large measure from the public, not the private sector. To call this 'socialism' is to do violence to the word and to the concept. To call it 'un-American' is a smear.

Adam Smith expanded on this notion by saying that a person pursing his own selfish interests may be "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

The obsession with which those on the right resist Charles Darwin's insight – that the complexity of nature does not imply a designer – matches the obsession with which those on the left resist Adam Smith's insight – that the complexity of society does not imply a planner.