Adam Smith
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.Collection: Great
All money is a matter of belief.Collection: Finance
No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Business
What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?Collection: Health
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.Collection: Nature
Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Science
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.Collection: Society
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Money
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Finance
I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Fear
Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Peace
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.
Defense is superior to opulence.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
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.
With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.
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.
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.
A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.Collection: People
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.Collection: Patriotic
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.Collection: Men
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.Most government is by the rich for the rich. Government comprises a large part of the organized injustice in any society, ancient or modern.Civil government, insofar as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, and for the defence of those who have property against those who have none.Collection: Reality
Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.Collection: Ambition
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.Collection: Purpose
There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Invisible Hand
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.Collection: Government
It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.Collection: Benefits
Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.Collection: Happiness
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.Collection: Affluence
The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.Collection: Powerful
The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.Collection: Ideas
He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intentionCollection: Ignorance
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.Collection: Progressive Taxation
The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.Collection: Vanity
The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.Collection: Minorities
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.Collection: Business
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.Collection: Money