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“A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands,…”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter I, p. 313 (see opportunity cost).

“Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from these rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 820.

“The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part VI

“What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 490.

“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

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 479.

“In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 80.

“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

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII.

“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

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part IV, Conclusion, p. 881.

“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

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 845.

“But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter III, Part V, p. 987.

“The man who employs either his labour or his stock in a grater variety of ways than his situation renders necessary, can never hurt his neighbour by underselling him. He may hurt himself, and he generally does so. Jack of all trades will never be rich, says the proverb. But the law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situations they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislator can do.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter V, Digression, p. 572.

“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

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 97.

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

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 896.

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

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I

“When the act of navigation was made, though England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent animosity subsisted between the two nations. … It is not impossible, therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have proceeded from national animosity. They are as wise, however, as if they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. National animosity at that particular time aimed at the very same object which the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended, the diminution of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could endanger the security of England.”

Adam Smith

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

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

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part III, (First Period) p. 221.

“The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter V, paragraph 82.

“For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter IV, p. 34.

“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

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter III, p. 377.

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

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 460.