Wonder and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.
ADAM SMITHResentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
More Adam Smith Quotes
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
ADAM SMITH -
The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
ADAM SMITH -
Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.
ADAM SMITH -
Labour was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.
ADAM SMITH -
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
ADAM SMITH -
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
ADAM SMITH -
Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
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.
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 -
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 -
As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state.
ADAM SMITH -
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
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 -
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
ADAM SMITH -
The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
ADAM SMITH -
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
ADAM SMITH -
The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.
ADAM SMITH -
The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.
ADAM SMITH -
It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
ADAM SMITH -
Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
ADAM SMITH -
The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
ADAM SMITH -
The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
ADAM SMITH -
It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be taxed.
ADAM SMITH -
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.
ADAM SMITH -
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
ADAM SMITH -
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
ADAM SMITH