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In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.
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
Great
Folly
Private
Perhaps
Wealth
Public
May
Admitted
Wells
Apology
Well
Frequently
More quotes by Adam Smith
The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.
Adam Smith
To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.
Adam Smith
The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. ...People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare... On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice.
Adam Smith
Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.
Adam Smith
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.
Adam Smith
Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
Adam Smith
The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
Adam Smith
Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.
Adam Smith
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
Adam Smith
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
Adam Smith
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.
Adam Smith
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.
Adam Smith
I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
Adam Smith
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Adam Smith
The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.
Adam Smith
It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.
Adam Smith
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.
Adam Smith
I am a beau in nothing but my books.
Adam Smith
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
Adam Smith
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
