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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.

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
Common
Spend
Lent
Two
Laughing
Employ
Part
Question
Prudence
Men
Economy
Sorts
Thinking
Rich
Liberalism
People
Asks
Stock
Profitably
Politics
Thinks
Idly
Greater
Laugh
Proposing

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The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition . . . is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.
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Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
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The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.
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Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.
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Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
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When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty.
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Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.
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Man, an animal that makes bargains.
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Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
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Every man lives by exchanging.
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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.
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Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.
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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.
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All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed.
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As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
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Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.
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Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.
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In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself.
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