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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
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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
Judgment
Division
Effects
Skill
Seem
Labour
Greatest
Productive
Greater
Improvement
Part
Powers
Dexterity
Seems
Anywhere
Applied
Skills
Directed
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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.
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But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.
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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.
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Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.
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There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
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Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
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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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The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit. In the great chess board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it
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By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound
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Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.
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Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
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Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.
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No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
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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.
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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.
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Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
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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.
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The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
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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.
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