Adam Smith Quotes (69 Quotes)


    Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.

    We're building this area between Milwaukee and Chicago as the best of both worlds. We're just excited to bring another high-profile event here.

    It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.

    No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.

    With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.


    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.

    The 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.

    Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.

    Every individual... generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry he intends only his own security and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

    Christina is truly deserving of this award. She always keeps her cool on the field and leads by example. Her approach to playing exemplifies the meaning of this recognition.

    The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels the same effects may be more easily produced.

    Give credit to their goalie as he had some good saves.

    On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.

    I have no faith in political arithmetic.

    You could pay down the national deficit with the cost of tickets.

    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.

    This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

    This program will help users discover more books, publishers sell more books and authors to ultimately write more books.

    Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

    To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.

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

    I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

    It was nerve-wracking coming to get my results. I was totally unsure what they would be. My offer from Sheffield was three As and my insurance offer from Leeds was also three As.

    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.

    The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.

    We want to improve coordination and deliver services as efficiently as possible.

    We think most publishers and authors will choose to participate in the publisher program in order to introduce their work to countless readers around the world.

    Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

    That was probably our best game of the year.

    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.

    The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.

    As a man of civil profession seems awkward in a camp or a garrison, and is even in danger of being despised there, so does an idle man among men of business,

    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.

    The mind is so rarely disturbed, but that the company of friend will restore it to some degree of tranquility and sedateness.

    The market will not go up unless it goes up, nor will it go down unless it goes down, and it will stay the same unless it does either.

    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.

    No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.


    I love the way it works now because it wins (games). We each bring a different aspect to the game and it's hard to stop us.

    Modern critics of the Conquest have an unlikely ally in the eighteenth-century prophet of laissez-faire economics 'It is not by the importation of gold and silver, that the discovery of America has enriched Europe. ... The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began t o take place which had never been thought of before, and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.'

    Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.

    What we're doing here is completely in line with the principles of fair use. We think this will help more users discover their books, and buy their books.

    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.

    When EAA began the 'Timeless Voices' project in 2002, we sought to record the personal histories of a remarkable aviation generation that was passing from our midst. We have saved many stories from people who now, just a few years later, are no longer with us.

    I've got to make the best of what I've got. I think we will be a stellar team. We've got a lot of young talent, but once they get the butterflies out, they will be OK. We're really looking forward to it.

    We are not ruling out that if a program is performing poorly, it doesn't get funding.

    We want the public to be more engaged.

    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.

    Any and all copyright holders ... can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library.

    Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.


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    Thomas Malthus - Alan Greenspan - Vilfredo Pareto - Paul A. Volcker - Joseph E. Stiglitz - Jeremy Rifkin - James Tobin - Gary Becker - E. F. Schumacher - Adam Smith


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