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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
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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
Always
Ought
Men
Wisdom
Credulous
Teach
Incredulity
Natural
Scarce
Lives
Acquired
Experience
Disposition
Enough
Seldom
Believe
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More quotes by Adam Smith
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.
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.
Adam Smith
We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.
Adam Smith
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.
Adam Smith
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
Adam Smith
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.
Adam Smith
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.
Adam Smith
It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.
Adam Smith
A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six he might like to have it but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.
Adam Smith
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Adam Smith
All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.
Adam Smith
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.
Adam Smith
Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.
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
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
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
The proprietor of stock is necessarily a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country.
Adam Smith
As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.
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
