Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations (1776)

140 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Adam Smith
Lands for the purposes of pleasure and magnificence, parks, gardens, public walks, &c. possessions which are every where considered as causes of expence, not as sources of revenue, seem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilized monarchy, ought to belong the crown.

Adam Smith
Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.

Adam Smith
The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society.

Adam Smith
In England, and in all Roman Catholic countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary.

Adam Smith
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Adam Smith
But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.

Adam Smith
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.

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

Adam Smith
China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.

Adam Smith
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 the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

Adam Smith
Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

Adam Smith
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

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

Adam Smith
Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

Adam Smith
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.

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

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

Adam Smith
A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures.

Adam Smith
The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

Adam Smith
The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.

Adam Smith
In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been emminent in that profession?

Adam Smith
Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.

Adam Smith
To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.

Adam Smith
Such taxes [upon the necessaries of life], when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder.

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

Adam Smith
In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

Adam Smith
Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.

Adam Smith
The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe.

Adam Smith