Quote

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Adam Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Adam Smith
Age: 67 †
Born: 1723
Born: June 16
Died: 1790
Died: July 17
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lang Toun
Innocent
Mercy
Government
Patriotic
Libertarian
Cruelty
Guilty

More quotes by Adam Smith

Image
We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.
Adam Smith
Image
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, capable not only of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting 100 impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.
Adam Smith
Image
The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.
Adam Smith
Image
Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
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
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
Image
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
Adam Smith
Image
The game women play is men.
Adam Smith
Image
The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.
Adam Smith
Image
It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be taxed.
Adam Smith
Image
Wonder... and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.
Adam Smith
Image
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Adam Smith
Image
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.
Adam Smith
Image
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.
Adam Smith
Image
The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditiona desire which?comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.
Adam Smith
Image
Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
Adam Smith