Adam Smith Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

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Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.

Adam Smith
The great affair, we always find, is to get money.

Adam Smith
China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

Adam Smith
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

Adam Smith
The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

Adam Smith
The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.

Adam Smith
Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

Adam Smith
It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.

Adam Smith
The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

Adam Smith
Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.

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

Adam Smith
We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.

Adam Smith
No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital.

Adam Smith
Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.

Adam Smith
Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.

Adam Smith
Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

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

Adam Smith
II. The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary.

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

Adam Smith
But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.

Adam Smith
Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.

Adam Smith
All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.

Adam Smith
Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.

Adam Smith
It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

Adam Smith
A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

Adam Smith
The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.

Adam Smith
That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.

Adam Smith
An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

Adam Smith
The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

Adam Smith
Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them.

Adam Smith