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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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Adam Smith
Age: 67 †
Born: 1723
Born: June 16
Died: 1790
Died: July 17
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lang Toun
Nations
Protectionism
Hands
Promote
Ends
Adam
Part
Invisible
Economics
Intention
Ignorance
Hand

More quotes by Adam Smith

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Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance.
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Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
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The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
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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.
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It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
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The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do.
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Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.
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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.
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It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
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Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.
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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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Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.
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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.
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The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
Adam Smith
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It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.
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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The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.
Adam Smith
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The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.
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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.
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