Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
Adam Smith
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Depends
Beggar
Nobody
Benevolence
Liberty
Chooses
Upon
Depend
Government
Libertarian
Fellow
Fellows
Citizens
Chiefly
More quotes by Adam Smith
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
Adam Smith
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
To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.
Adam Smith
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.
Adam Smith
Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
Adam Smith
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
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
That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
Adam Smith
The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.
Adam Smith
The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.
Adam Smith
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
Adam Smith
When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.
Adam Smith
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
Adam Smith
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
As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.
Adam Smith
To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.
Adam Smith
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
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
China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.
Adam Smith
But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.
Adam Smith
