Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
ADAM SMITHScience is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
ADAM SMITHOn the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
ADAM SMITHThe division of labour was limited by the extent of the market.
ADAM SMITHConsumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
ADAM SMITHThe propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.
ADAM SMITHIt is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
ADAM SMITHNothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.
ADAM SMITHBeneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.
ADAM SMITHMercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.
ADAM SMITHThe 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 SMITHA 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 SMITHAll 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 SMITHMan is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.
ADAM SMITHPeople 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 SMITHThe violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.
ADAM SMITHThe 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