Adam Smith: Trending quotes (page 7)

“When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Personality

“A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book III, Chapter IV, p. 456.

Country

“The evident justice and utility of the foregoing maxims have recommended them more or less to the attention of all nations.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 894.

Justice

“The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II

People , Exercises , Personality

“II. The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary.”

Adam Smith

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

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

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II, p. 935.

Secret

“The virtue of frugality lies in a middle between avarice and profusion, of which the one consists in an excess, the other in a defect of the proper attention to the objects of self–interest.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

“Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 87.

Marriage , Children

“As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Love , Law , Nature

“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 book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Love , Way

“To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 505.

Freedom

“The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. … As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.”

Adam Smith

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

“In ease of body and 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 book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Life , Peace , Sun , Fight

“Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people. The former are the original sensations; the latter the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former may be said to be the substance; the latter the shadow.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Pain , People , Pleasure , Feeling

“This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter I

People , Time

“the competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter X, Part II, p. 154.

“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 expence, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.”

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter III, p. 381.

People , Law

“All money is a matter of belief.”

Adam Smith

https://www.amazon.com/All-money-matter-belief-quotes/dp/B01M0HLG6B
Attributed

Money

“Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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

Nature , Personality

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

Adam Smith

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part III, (First Period) p. 223.