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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
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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
Individual
Frequently
Done
Affected
Much
Capitalism
Really
Trade
Effectually
Good
Public
Intends
Never
Known
Promotes
Interest
Pursuing
Society
Promote
More quotes by Adam Smith
Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.
Adam Smith
Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
Adam Smith
A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.
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Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.
Adam Smith
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Adam Smith
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
Adam Smith
Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, is consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.
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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.
Adam Smith
China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.
Adam Smith
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Adam Smith
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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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
Have lots of experiments, but make sure they're strategically focused.
Adam Smith
The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.
Adam Smith
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.
Adam Smith
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
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
Adam Smith
The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.
Adam Smith
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
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
