Adam Smith quotes - page 5

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. (Adam Smith)
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. View quote
Adam Smith
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity. View quote
Adam Smith
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches. View quote
Adam Smith
No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money. View quote
Adam Smith
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. View quote
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. View quote
Adam Smith
Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back. View quote
Adam Smith
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts. View quote
Adam Smith
Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition. View quote
Adam Smith
Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man. (Adam Smith)
Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty. View quote
Adam Smith
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. View quote
Adam Smith
A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little. View quote
Adam Smith
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. View quote
Adam Smith
The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of the employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced. View quote
Adam Smith
By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by extracting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor... View quote
Adam Smith
In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country. View quote
Adam Smith
Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks are many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man. View quote
Adam Smith
In England, and in all Roman Catholic countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary. View quote
Adam Smith
Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment. Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honour, yet seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world. (Adam Smith)
That of beaver skins, of beaver wool, and of gum Senega, has been subjected to higher duties; Great Britain, by the conquest of Canada and Senegal, having got almost the monopoly of those commodities. View quote
Adam Smith
A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands,... View quote
Adam Smith
The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction. View quote
Adam Smith
But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does. View quote
Adam Smith