Top 250 Adam Smith Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “In the common degree of the moral, there is no virtue. Virtue is excellence.”

— Adam Smith

152. “The real price of everything is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”

— Adam Smith

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

— Adam Smith

154. “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

155. “The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth. The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and cannot possibly increase without it.”

— Adam Smith

156. “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

157. “Monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which can never be universally established, but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces every body to have recourse to it for the sake of self defence.”

— Adam Smith

158. “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

159. “But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood.”

— Adam Smith

160. “It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.”

— Adam Smith

161. “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

162. “Whatever be the actual state of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which labour is applied in any nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must depend, during the continuance of that state, upon the proportion between the number of those who are annually employed.”

— Adam Smith

163. “The most sacred laws of justice are the laws which guard the life and person of our neighbor.”

— Adam Smith

164. “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

165. “Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity:...”

— Adam Smith

166. “History may not repeat itself,” in Mark Twain’s wise formulation, “but it rhymes.”

— Adam Smith

167. “Men desire to have some share in the management of public affairs chiefly on account of the importance which it gives them.”

— Adam Smith

168. “Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment.”

— Adam Smith

169. “The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies.”

— Adam Smith

170. “The extent of the market, therefore, must for a long time be in proportion to the riches and populousness of that country, and consequently their improvement must always be posterior to the improvement of that country.”

— Adam Smith

171. “Men are much more likely to discover easier and readier methods of attaining any object, when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object, than when it is dissipated among a great variety of things.”

— Adam Smith

172. “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

173. “A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.”

— Adam Smith

174. “To attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils.”

— Adam Smith

175. “Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.”

— Adam Smith

176. “In all the different employments of stock, the ordinary rate of profit varies more or less with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns.”

— Adam Smith

177. “A sketch of a man facing to the right.”

— Adam Smith

178. “A true party-man hates and despises candour.”

— Adam Smith

179. “Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you.”

— Adam Smith

180. “Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as the most despotical.”

— Adam Smith

181. “Every such regulation introduces some degree of real disorder into the constitution of the state, which it will be difficult afterwards to cure without occasioning another disorder.”

— Adam Smith

182. “Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.”

— Adam Smith

183. “Lawyers and attorneys, 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

184. “Pleasure and pain are the great objects of desire and aversion: but these are distinguished not by reason, but by immediate sense and feeling. If virtue, therefore, be desirable for its own sake, and if vice be, in the same manner, the object of aversion, it cannot be reason which originally distinguishes those different qualities, but immediate sense and feeling.”

— Adam Smith

185. “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

186. “A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable. 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. The rent of houses, though it in some respects resembles the rent of land, is in one respect essentially different from it.”

— Adam Smith

187. “It is in this manner that the demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men; quickens it when it goes on too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast.”

— Adam Smith

188. “We see frequently societies of merchants in London, and other trading towns, purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit, by means of factors and agents, notwithstanding the great distance and the uncertain returns, from the defective administration of justice in those countries.”

— Adam Smith

189. “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

190. “The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading, and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires.”

— Adam Smith

191. “Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.”

— Adam Smith

192. “It is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and powerful, that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. That which is carried on for the benefit of the poor and the indigent, is too often, either neglected, or oppressed.”

— Adam Smith

193. “The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniencies and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary.”

— Adam Smith

194. “In the time of Servius Tullius, who first coined money at Rome, the Roman as or pondo contained a Roman pound of good copper.”

— Adam Smith

195. “Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them.”

— Adam Smith

196. “The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use.”

— Adam Smith

197. “Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in his view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.”

— Adam Smith

198. “Suppose that government is founded on contract, and that these powers are entrusted to persons who grossly abuse them, it is evident that resistance is lawful, because the original contract is now broken. But we showed before that government was founded on the principles of utility and authority. We also showed that the principle of authority is more prevalent in a monarchy, and that of utility in a democracy, from their frequent attendance on public meetings and courts of justice.”

— Adam Smith

199. “The agreeable passions of love and joy can satisfy and support the heart without any auxiliary pleasure. The bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment more strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy.”

— Adam Smith

200. “Cheap years tend to increase the proportion of independent workmen to journeymen and servants of all kinds, and dear years to diminish it.”

— Adam Smith