Quote

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

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
Upstart
Respected
Everywhere
Ancient
Greatness
Less

More quotes by Adam Smith

Image
Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.
Adam Smith
Image
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
Adam Smith
Image
I have no faith in political arithmetic.
Adam Smith
Image
I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
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
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
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.
Adam Smith
Image
In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.
Adam Smith
Image
It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
Adam Smith
Image
It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.
Adam Smith
Image
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
Image
A sketch of a man facing to the right.
Adam Smith
Image
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
Adam Smith
Image
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
Image
Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.
Adam Smith
Image
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
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
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
Adam Smith
Image
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
Adam Smith
Image
The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
Adam Smith