Smith Adam Quotes & Sayings

The celebrated Adam Smith was the first to point out the immense increase of production, and the superior perfection of products referable to this division of labour. — Jean-Baptiste Say

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. — Adam Smith

All right, Adam", I say. "You're gonna help me win this war. — Pittacus Lore

A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people. — Adam Smith

The game women play is men. — Adam Smith

That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries. — Adam Smith

Faith is the deepest and truest form of magic. — Seth Adam Smith

Men and women are what they make of themselves. — Seth Adam Smith

Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it. — Adam Smith

Love is what freed me from the cell of my selfishness. — Seth Adam Smith

The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called 'value in use;' the other, 'value in exchange.' The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water; but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods — Adam Smith

He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens." That is Adam Smith talking, the apostle of laissez-faire. — Charles Murray

On the conservative side, today's libertarianism is far more dogmatic and devoid of qualification than the liberalism of Adam Smith or J.S. Mill. Like Marxism, libertarianism is a utopian worldview based on an economic-determinist vision of history. Unlike Marxism, libertarianism is highly specific in its predictions about the transition to the utopian world order, rendering it vulnerable to fact. — Michael Lind

I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlled by the king and aristocracy. That was essential. — James D. Watson

And a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire. — Adam Smith

The difference between the genius of the British constitution, which protects and governs North America, and that of the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies, cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the different state of those countries. — Adam Smith

For centuries, economic thinkers, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes, have tried to identify the elusive formula that makes some countries more prosperous and successful than others. My curiosity about this topic spurred me, as a young professor of economics in the late 1970s, to research new ways of measuring national competitiveness. — Klaus Schwab

We may not be able to control what happens to us, but we can always control how we react. — Seth Adam Smith

Everything you see is merely a symbol for things you do not see. — Seth Adam Smith

Adam Smith was not the proponent of any one class. He was a slave to his system. His whole economic philosophy stemmed from his unquestioning faith in the ability of the market to guide the system to its point of highest return. The market-that wonderful social machine-would take care of society's needs if it was left alone. Don't try to do good, says Smith. Let good emerge as the by-product of selfishness. — Robert Heilbroner

Every man lives by exchanging. — Adam Smith

But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies. — Adam Smith

Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing. — Niall Ferguson

I have learned that I always feel happier and healthier when I offer genuine love to other people. — Seth Adam Smith

One human life is worth more than all the treasures of the earth. — Seth Adam Smith

Although Adam Smith is today often regarded as a "conservative" figure, he in fact attacked some of the dominant ideas and interests of his own times. Moreover, the idea of a spontaneously self-equilibrating system - the market economy - first developed by the Physiocrats and later made part of the tradition of classical economics by Adam Smith, represented a radically new departure, not only in analysis of social causation but also in seeing a reduced role for political, intellectual, or other elites as guides or controllers of the masses. — Thomas Sowell

There are several states that move from Karl Marx-like policies to Adam Smith-like policies and back again in a weekend. So for the states with huge volatility in their income tax policies over time, the differences in growth rates in those periods are really amazingly consistent with tax rates really mattering. — Arthur Laffer

Faith can turn the night to light. — Seth Adam Smith

Where does your soul walk? — Seth Adam Smith

It may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meet is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butchers' meat. — Adam Smith

Every man, woman, and child on this earth is a wandering pilgrim in his or her own way - each searching for a belonging place. That sense of belonging is found only as we care for one another. — Seth Adam Smith

I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

To love the creations of the Earth is to worship the Being who created them. — Seth Adam Smith

In all governments accordingly, even in monarchies, the highest offices are generally possessed, and the whole detail of the administration conducted, by men who were educated in the middle and inferior ranks of life, who have been carried forward by their own industry and abilities, though loaded with the jealousy, and opposed by the resentment, of all those who were born their superiors, and to whom the great, after having regarded them first with contempt, and afterwards with envy, are at last contented to truckle with the same abject meanness with which they desire that the rest of mankind should behave to themselves. — Adam Smith

The great affair, we always find, is to get money. — Adam Smith

The State (meaning the gov't and society) derives no inconsiderable advantage from the peoples instruction (in other words, education). The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition.
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The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction, is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of society. — Adam Smith

From the equilibrium and spontaneous order of Adam Smith and his heirs, from invisible-handed markets and perfect competition, supply and demand, and rewards and punishments, I was pushed to theories of disequilibrium and disorder, and information and noise, as the keys to understanding economic progress. — George Gilder

When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers. — Adam Smith

We don't legislate emergent technologies into existence. We almost never do. They just emerge, dragged forth by Adam Smith's invisible hand. Then we have to see what people are actually going to do with them, and try to legislate to take account of that. — William Gibson

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that ... But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. — Adam Smith

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. — Adam Smith

Without faith, you are as a crow who has forgotten his ability to fly; you peck at the dark, muddy earth when the bright mountains lie before you. — Seth Adam Smith

25 Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. — Joseph Smith Jr.

We accept without reservation the scriptural teachings that Christ is the Son of God and that he came into the world to ransom men from the spiritual and temporal death brought into the world by the fall of Adam. No one can state too plainly or emphasize too strongly this eternal truth that salvation is in Christ and that it comes because of his atoning sacrifice. Nor can we set forth too clearly the gospel truth that we also must do certain things to be saved. — Joseph Fielding Smith

This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many. — Adam Smith

But no moral philosopher, from Aristotle to Aquinas, to John Locke and Adam Smith, divorced economics from a set of moral ends or held the production of wealth to be an end in itself; rather it was seen as a means to the realization of virtue, a means of leading a civilized life. — Daniel Bell

This garden is your life. Of course, there are the occasional weeds - but more than anything, this garden is filled with so much life! — Seth Adam Smith

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

It was not for nothing that Adam Smith wrote that "people 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." The romantic notion of politics holds that Big Business is synonymous with capitalism and the archenemy of socialism. In fact, Big Business is reliably against most of what must go into any modern definition of capitalism: free trade, free enterprise, free markets, and the impartial rule of law. Big Business reliably seeks to use the state to seek advantages in trade and to crush smaller (and often more innovative) competitors. — Kevin D. Williamson

For each of us, there comes a time when we must awaken and become what we were born to become. — Seth Adam Smith

The first and probably most fundamental aspect of this crisis is that we are now close to the commodification of everything. That is, historical capitalism is in crisis precisely because, in pursuing the endless accumulation of capital, it is beginning to approximate that state of being Adam Smith asserted was 'natural' to man but which has never historically existed. The 'propensity [of humanity] to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another' has entered into domains and zones previously untouched, and the pressure to expand commodification is relatively unchecked. — Immanuel Wallerstein

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. — Adam Smith

Under capitalism the more money you have, the easier it is to make money, and the less money you have, the harder.Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. The affluence of the rich supposes the indigence of the many. — Adam Smith

A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate. — Adam Smith

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. — Adam Smith

You cannot defeat darkness by running from it, nor can you conquer your inner demons by hiding them from the world. In order to defeat the darkness, you must bring it into the light. — Seth Adam Smith

And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us. — Adam Smith

Reigning doctrines are often called a "double standard".The term is misleading.It is more accurate to describe them as a single standard,clear and unmistakable,the standard that Adam Smith called the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind: ...All for ourselves,and nothing for other people." Much has changed since his day,but the vile maxim flourishes. — Noam Chomsky

Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as or the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed. — Adam Smith

It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that
great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie. — Vladimir Lenin

Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only. — Adam Smith

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade. — Adam Smith

The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition ... is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration. — Adam Smith

There is nothing more real than light. — Seth Adam Smith

Two different sets of philosophers have attempted to teach us this hardest of all the lessons of morality. One set have laboured to increase our sensibility to the interests of others; another, to diminish that to our own. The first would have us feel for others as we naturally feel for ourselves. The second would have us feel for ourselves, as we naturally feel for others. — 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

To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty. — Adam Smith

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it. — Adam Smith

It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest. England is certainly, in the present times, a much richer country than any part of North America. The wages of labour, however, are much higher in North America than in any part of England. — Adam Smith

In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake; the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself. — Adam Smith

What happens if it doesn't work out, Charli?" he called.
"Then it's not the end, Adam," I replied, barely slowing my walk. — G.J. Walker-Smith

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

Who Protects the Consumer? "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. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. I, [>] — Milton Friedman

Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. — Adam Smith

Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. ...
And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold. — Milton Friedman

I didn't just see a child in my dreams - I felt it in my heart. — Seth Adam Smith

I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to. — William Stanley Jevons

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

Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them. — Adam Smith

If ... capital is divided between two different grocers, their competition will tend to make both of them sell cheaper, than if it were in the hands of one only; and if it were divided among twenty, their competition would be just so much the greater, and the chance of their combining together, in order to raise the price, just so much the less. Their competition
might perhaps ruin some of themselves; but to take care of this is the business of the parties concerned, and it may safely be trusted to their discretion. It can never hurt either the consumer, or the producer; on the contrary, it must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer, than if the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons. — Adam Smith

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind. — Adam Smith

The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast. — Adam Smith

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 Smith

The first duty of the sovereign [is] that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, [which] can be performed only by means of a military force — 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

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another. — Adam Smith

Abundance in life is achieved only when we tear down walls and fill our lives with light. — Seth Adam Smith

1 person will tell you that you can do it, 100 people will tell you that you can't, and 20 people will tell you that you can do it only with their help. One person is right. — Ryan Adam Smith

For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education. — Adam Smith

These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another- yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago. — Milton Friedman

Defense is superior to opulence. — Adam Smith

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself. — Adam Smith

To superficial minds, the vices of the great seem at all times agreeable. — Adam Smith

The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned. — Adam Smith

The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets. — Jon Meacham

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. — Adam Smith

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor. — Adam Smith

Both ground- rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore, perhaps the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them. — Adam Smith

Likewise, I know that if you continue to move forward - however slow your pace might seem - you will conquer your darkest canyons and your tallest mountains. — Seth Adam Smith