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 SMITHOn the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
More Adam Smith Quotes
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The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
ADAM SMITH -
It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.
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 -
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 -
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 SMITH -
The 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 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 -
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 -
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 -
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.
ADAM SMITH -
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
ADAM SMITH -
It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
ADAM SMITH -
The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
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 -
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







