About Adam Smith: Adam Smith was a British moral philosopher, pioneer of political economy, and key Scottish Enlightenment figure.
There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.
The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.
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 b...
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfect...
Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary.
The prudent man is always sincere, and feels horror at the very thought of exposing himself to the disgrace which attends upon the detection of falsehood. But though always sincere, he is not always frank and open; and though he never tells any thing...
If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least. . . .abstain from robbing and murdering one another. So beneficence is less essential than justice is to the existence of society; a lack of beneficence will make a society unco...
The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another...
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessenin...
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.
The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for ...
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.
of their passions in the same object at that particular time.
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.
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
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.
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
