Adam Smith Quotes

“A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands.”

“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.”

“Every man lives by exchanging.”

“Individual ambition serves the common good.”

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

“Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.”

“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

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

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

“What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.”