110+ Adam Smith Quotes On Economics, Capitalism And Human Nature

Adam Smith was a Scottish economist and philosopher, born in 1723. He is best known for his book, The Wealth of Nations, which is considered to be the foundation of modern economic theory. Smith is also known for his theory of the "invisible hand," which posits that individuals acting in their own self-interest can lead to the betterment of society. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Adam Smith on economics, capitalism, human nature.

Top 10 Adam Smith Quotes

1. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.
6. On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.
7. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
8. A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.
9. 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.
10. Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.

Adam Smith Short Quotes

• Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.
• I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
• Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
• No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
• All money is a matter of belief.
• Defense is superior to opulence.
• The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.
• Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
• We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.
• This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

Adam Smith Quotes About Economics

He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention — Adam Smith

Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good. — Adam Smith

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. — Adam Smith

Every man lives by exchanging. — Adam Smith

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. — Adam Smith

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods. — Adam Smith

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. — 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 rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. — Adam Smith

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

Adam Smith Quotes About Capitalism

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. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third. — Adam Smith

All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Government

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. — Adam Smith

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

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. — Adam Smith

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities. — Adam Smith

Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them. — Adam Smith

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers. — Adam Smith

There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. — Adam Smith

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. — 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

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Education

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

For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education. — Adam Smith

The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune. — Adam Smith

An English university is a sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection after they have been . hunted out of every corner of the world. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Competition

That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience. — Adam Smith

The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. — Adam Smith

In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labour, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Taxes

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. — Adam Smith

Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State. — Adam Smith

To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty. — Adam Smith

It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be taxed. — Adam Smith

Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Poverty

That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages. — Adam Smith

The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. — Adam Smith

But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Real

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. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord. — Adam Smith

It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Poor

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. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Quotes About Animal

Man, an animal that makes bargains. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

Mankind are animals that makes bargains, no other animal does this. — Adam Smith

The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned. — Adam Smith

Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence. — Adam Smith

Adam Smith Famous Quotes And Sayings

Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. — 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 wealth of the world was originally purchased. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches. — Adam Smith

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. — Adam Smith

The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination. — Adam Smith

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. — Adam Smith

The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex. — Adam Smith

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves. — Adam Smith

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, capable not only of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting 100 impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations. — Adam Smith

Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation. — Adam Smith

In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for. — Adam Smith

A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural. — Adam Smith

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

The game women play is men. — Adam Smith

The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. — Adam Smith

The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast. — Adam Smith

The cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. ...People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare... On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice. — Adam Smith

The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed. — Adam Smith

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

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged. — Adam Smith

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention. — Adam Smith

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind. — Adam Smith

The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do. — Adam Smith

Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. — Adam Smith

Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own. — Adam Smith

Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest. — Adam Smith

Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come. — Adam Smith

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. — Adam Smith

The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit. In the great chess board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it — Adam Smith

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

The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity. — Adam Smith

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor. — 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

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters. — Adam Smith

I have no faith in political arithmetic. — Adam Smith

The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster. — Adam Smith

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience? — Adam Smith

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

Wonder... and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature. — Adam Smith

The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce. — Adam Smith

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

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

It may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meet is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butchers' meat. — Adam Smith

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

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. — Adam Smith

Life Lessons by Adam Smith

1. Adam Smith taught us the importance of free markets, economic self-interest, and the division of labor. He also showed us that economic progress is driven by the pursuit of individual self-interest, but that it is tempered by the need to act in the best interests of society as a whole.
2. Adam Smith also taught us that competition is essential for economic growth and that government should not interfere in the free market. He argued that government should focus on providing a stable environment for businesses to operate in, rather than attempting to control the market.
3. Finally, Adam Smith taught us that economic growth is best achieved through a combination of individual effort and collective action. He argued that the pursuit of self-interest should be balanced with the need to act in the