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 SMITHIt 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.
More Adam Smith Quotes
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Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
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Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.
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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 -
Every man lives by exchanging.
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Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.
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 -
Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.
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Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State.
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I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
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When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.
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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Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.
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Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.
ADAM SMITH -
Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.
ADAM SMITH -
It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.
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Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.
ADAM SMITH -
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
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The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.
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The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
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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 -
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 -
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 -
All money is a matter of belief.
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 -
A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.
ADAM SMITH -
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