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I am a beau in nothing but my books.

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
Beau
Books
Book
Nothing

More quotes by Adam Smith

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It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
Adam Smith
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Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.
Adam Smith
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No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
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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That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
Adam Smith
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In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.
Adam Smith
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Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back
Adam Smith
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It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
Adam Smith
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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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The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
Adam Smith
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Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.
Adam Smith
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All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.
Adam Smith
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Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Adam Smith
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The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
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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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
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A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
Adam Smith
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Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Adam Smith
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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.
Adam Smith
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The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe.
Adam Smith