Adam Smith Quotes
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Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.
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By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound,
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The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.
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Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
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The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes.
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The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.
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The Hudson's Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company.
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Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.
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It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.
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The great affair, we always find, is to get money.
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The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.
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As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
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Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.
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I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.
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The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only.
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How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.
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A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
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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.
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It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
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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.
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In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been emminent in that profession?
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When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.
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China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.
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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.