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The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
Adam Smith
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Adam Smith
Age: 67 †
Born: 1723
Born: June 16
Died: 1790
Died: July 17
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lang Toun
Must
Generations
Persist
Theory
Observation
Numbers
Economics
Greatest
Details
Economy
Rule
Opinion
Generation
Facts
Changes
Absorb
Change
Number
Detail
More quotes by Adam Smith
When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty.
Adam Smith
To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.
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Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.
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I have no faith in political arithmetic.
Adam Smith
I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
Adam Smith
Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.
Adam Smith
A true party-man hates and despises candour.
Adam Smith
For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
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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.
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A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.
Adam Smith
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.
Adam Smith
But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.
Adam Smith
It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.
Adam Smith
In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself.
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In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.
Adam Smith
But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies.
Adam Smith
