"Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse."
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Quote collection
Adam Smith quotes (page 2 of 11)
204 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention"
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"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens."
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"Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness."
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"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."
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"Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production."
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"I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."
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"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."
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"Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good."
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"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."
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"No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money."
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"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."
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"It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society."
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"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
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"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience."
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"The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour."
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"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. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce."
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"All money is a matter of belief."
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"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."
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