338 Quotes by Adam Smith

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

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

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

An English university is a sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection after they have been . hunted out of every corner of the world.

The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.

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.

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.

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.