Quotes for All
Market forces have no intrinsically moral direction, which is why, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ethics should precede economics. But it doesn’t have to. . . . We know this because we’ve seen the results of capitalism without conscience: the pollution of the air we … Read more
Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor. Adam Smith
China is a much richer country than any part of Europe. Adam Smith
The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. Adam Smith
The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating. Adam Smith
Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters. Adam Smith
The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. Adam Smith
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities. Adam Smith
The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit. In the great chess board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it Adam Smith
Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Adam Smith