338 Quotes by Adam Smith

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.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.

All money is a matter of belief.

Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production

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 encumbers its operations

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.

I have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow.