Quote

The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.

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
Proper
Vanity
Direct
Objects
Education
Secret
Great

More quotes by Adam Smith

Image
But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies.
Adam Smith
Image
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.
Adam Smith
Image
Man, an animal that makes bargains.
Adam Smith
Image
The division of labour was limited by the extent of the market
Adam Smith
Image
Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.
Adam Smith
Image
In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.
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
It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
Adam Smith
Image
By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Adam Smith
Image
Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.
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
Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
Adam Smith
Image
The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
Adam Smith
Image
Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.
Adam Smith
Image
Defense is superior to opulence.
Adam Smith
Image
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.
Adam Smith
Image
The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.
Adam Smith
Image
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