By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
ADAM SMITHWhat can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
More Adam Smith Quotes
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
ADAM SMITH -
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
ADAM SMITH -
I have no faith in political arithmetic.
ADAM SMITH -
Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.
ADAM SMITH -
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
ADAM SMITH -
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
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 -
I am a beau in nothing but my books.
ADAM SMITH -
Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things.
ADAM SMITH -
The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.
ADAM SMITH -
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
ADAM SMITH