About Adam Smith: Adam Smith was a British moral philosopher, pioneer of political economy, and key Scottish Enlightenment figure.
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.
All money is a matter of belief.
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.
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.
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.
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 complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.
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.
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.
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.
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
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.
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
Defense is superior to opulence.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
