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Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

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
Fellow
Fellows
Citizens
Chiefly
Depends
Beggar
Nobody
Benevolence
Chooses
Liberty
Depend
Upon
Libertarian
Government

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It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
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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.
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The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.
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Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
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That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is most often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.
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Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.
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The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
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For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
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Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.
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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.
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The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
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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.
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Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.
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A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
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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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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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People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
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As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.
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What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
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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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