24 Quotes by Adam Smith about Men

  • Author Adam Smith
  • Quote

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

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  • Author Adam Smith
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    Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.

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  • Author Adam Smith
  • Quote

    It may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meet is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butchers' meat.

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  • Author Adam Smith
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    How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

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  • Author Adam Smith
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    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.

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  • Author Adam Smith
  • Quote

    Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.

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  • Author Adam Smith
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    The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.

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