Top 250 Adam Smith Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.”

— Adam Smith

52. “There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”

— Adam Smith

53. “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

54. “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.”

— Adam Smith

55. “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.”

— Adam Smith

56. “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

57. “On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.”

— Adam Smith

58. “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

59. “Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.”

— Adam Smith

60. “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

61. “That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.”

— Adam Smith

62. “Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.”

— Adam Smith

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

— Adam Smith

64. “No society can flourish of which the greater part is poor and miserable.”

— Adam Smith

65. “Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.”

— Adam Smith

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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

69. “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

70. “Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.”

— Adam Smith

71. “To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature.”

— Adam Smith

72. “Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.”

— Adam Smith

73. “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

74. “The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.”

— Adam Smith

75. “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

76. “Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.”

— Adam Smith

77. “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

78. “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

79. “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

80. “China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.”

— Adam Smith

81. “Thus the labour of a manufacture adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his masters profits. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.”

— Adam Smith

82. “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

83. “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

84. “But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.”

— Adam Smith

85. “Have lots of experiments, but make sure they’re strategically focused.”

— Adam Smith

86. “We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.”

— Adam Smith

87. “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

88. “The great affair, we always find, is to get money.”

— Adam Smith

89. “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

90. “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. 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.”

— Adam Smith

91. “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

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

— Adam Smith

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

— Adam Smith

94. “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

95. “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

96. “Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.”

— Adam Smith

97. “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.”

— Adam Smith

98. “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

99. “Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.”

— Adam Smith

100. “Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.”

— Adam Smith