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A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
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
Necessarily
Citizens
Particular
Country
Merchant
Merchants
Citizen
Properly
Economics
More quotes by Adam Smith
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
What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
Adam Smith
The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
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I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
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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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
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
Adam Smith
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
Thus the labour of a manufacture adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his masters profits. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.
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
We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.
Adam Smith
That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.
Adam Smith
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.
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A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third.
Adam Smith
In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
Adam Smith
Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
Adam Smith
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
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 annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.
Adam Smith
The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.
Adam Smith
