X

Sort by

Quote length

Sentiment

Change font

Change background

Adam Smith Inspirational Quotes (173)

Page 1 of 8
Filter & Style
Image
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
Adam Smith
Image
A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
Adam Smith
Image
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
Adam Smith
Image
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.
Adam Smith
Image
All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed.
Adam Smith
Image
Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.
Adam Smith
Image
Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
Adam Smith
Image
In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.
Adam Smith
Image
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
Adam Smith
Image
In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
Adam Smith
Image
But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.
Adam Smith
Image
Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.
Adam Smith
Image
Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
Adam Smith
Image
The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.
Adam Smith
Image
The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.
Adam Smith
Image
The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.
Adam Smith
Image
Thus the labour of a manufacture adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his masters profits. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.
Adam Smith
Image
The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.
Adam Smith
Image
A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six he might like to have it but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.
Adam Smith
Image
In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
Adam Smith
Image
That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.
Adam Smith
Image
The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
Adam Smith
Previous
Next