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Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

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
Times
Power
Never
Complain
Complaining
Economics

More quotes by Adam Smith

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To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.
Adam Smith
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The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. ...People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare... On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.
Adam Smith
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We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.
Adam Smith
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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.
Adam Smith
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The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.
Adam Smith
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That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
Adam Smith
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I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
Adam Smith
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Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Adam Smith
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A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third.
Adam Smith
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The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.
Adam Smith
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The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.
Adam Smith
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Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
Adam Smith
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
Adam Smith
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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
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Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.
Adam Smith
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
Adam Smith
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He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention
Adam Smith
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Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.
Adam Smith
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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 to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.
Adam Smith
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A sketch of a man facing to the right.
Adam Smith