Adam Smith Quotes
Most popular Adam Smith Quotes
The government is influenced by shopkeepers.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers.
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.
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.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
Whatever a person saves from his revenue he adds to his capital, and either employs it himself in maintaining an additional number of productive hands, or enables some person to do so ... for a share of profits. As the capital of an individual can be increased only by what he saves ... so the capital of a society can be increased only in the same manner.
Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or hear of, or remember, and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to set still and to be contented.
