Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
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
Sake
Desire
Money
Men
Purchase
More quotes by 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
Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.
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
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
Adam Smith
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.
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.
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
No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
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
That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.
Adam Smith
The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.
Adam Smith
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
Adam Smith
Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.
Adam Smith
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.
Adam Smith
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Adam Smith
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.
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
In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.
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
The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.
Adam Smith
