Adam Smith: Trending quotes (page 6)

“Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.”

Adam Smith

Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2.
(1776)

Life , People , Time , Parting

“In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Support , Nature , Universe , Animals

“In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake; the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Life , Personality

“Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article III, p. 874.

“In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been emminent in that profession?”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 824.

Men , Law , Success , Country

“The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes.”

Adam Smith

Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 1.
(1776)

Life

“Oatmeal indeed supplies the common people of Scotland with the greatest and best part of their food, which is in general much inferior to that of their neighbours of the same rank in England.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 91 (Oatmeal in England makes for great horses, in Scotland Great Men).

People , Food , Parting

“The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 821.

People , Light , Loss

“To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter V, p. 584.

Justice , Law , Exercises , Idea

“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

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article II, p. 847.

People , Education , Parting

“The administration of the great system of the universe, however, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension; the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country: that he is occupied in contemplating the more sublime, can never be an excuse for his neglecting the more humble department.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

God , Family , Business , Universe

“No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord. 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

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 486.

Nature , Study , Parting

“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

Source: (1776), Book III, Chapter II, p. 426-427.

Hurt

“China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 86.

World , Travel , Time , Country

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

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VII, p. 69.

Nature

“I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities, that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 892.

Support

“The Hudson's Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 806.

War

“Lotteries are a tax on ignorance.”

Adam Smith

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,581090,00.html
Attributed

“No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter I, p. 311.

“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

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 81.

Family