Adam Smith Quotes

Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

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.

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.

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

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

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.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.

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

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.