Adam Smith Quotes on Economy, Wealth, Taxes and Capitalism

Adam Smith was born on June 5, 1723 in Kirkaldy, a small town in Scotland. But some believe that he was born on 16 June 1723. His father was a customs officer. When Adam was 3 months old, his father passed away. Adam was probably the only child of his parents. Adam Smith was a famous Scottish naturalist and optimistic economist, on the basis of which he elaborated his views on the beneficial nature of economics. His first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiment, was published in 1759. Adam’s two books are most famous in economics. The first book is “The Theory of Moral Sentence” and the second is “Inquiry on the Nature and Cause of the Nations”. In both these books, Smith has expressed a broad outlook on the economic situation of today. Below we have handpicked a collection of famous and best Adam Smith quotes about Economy, Wealth, Taxes and Capitalism.

Adam Smith Quotes

  • Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. ― Adam Smith
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  • Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another. ― Adam Smith
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best adam smith quotes

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

― Adam Smith
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  • Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.― Adam Smith
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  • What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?  ― Adam Smith
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  • 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. ― Adam Smith
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  • Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary.― Adam Smith
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adam smith quotes on money

No complaint… is more common than that of a scarcity of money.

― Adam Smith
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  • Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back. ― Adam Smith
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  • Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it. ― Adam Smith
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  • The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery. ― Adam Smith
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  • The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money. ― Adam Smith
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  • We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it. ― Adam Smith
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  • There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. ― Adam Smith
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  • A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it’s people. ― Adam Smith
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adam smith quotes capitalism

Every man lives by exchanging.

― Adam Smith
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  • It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. ― Adam Smith
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  • But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. ― Adam Smith
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  • Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. — Adam Smith
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  • Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another. — Adam Smith
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  • On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity. — Adam Smith
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You may also like: Money Matters: Top Money and Wealth Quotes

  • The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another… — Adam Smith
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  • What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. ― Adam Smith
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  • Here is a documentary taking a look into the life of the real Adam Smith. With ideas that changed the world, Smith impacted both economic and ethical ways of doing business in a world market. ― Adam Smith
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  • 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. ― Adam Smith
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adam smith quotes on greed

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.

― Adam Smith
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  • Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. ― Adam Smith
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  • To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature. ― Adam Smith
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  • As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. ― Adam Smith
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  • People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. ― Adam Smith
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  • 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. ― Adam Smith
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  • It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country. ― Adam Smith
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  • He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. ― Adam Smith
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adam smith quotes on finance

All money is a matter of belief.

― Adam Smith
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  • What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience? ― Adam Smith
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  • Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. ― Adam Smith
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  • Individual ambition serves the common good. ― Adam Smith
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  • The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects. ― Adam Smith
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  • Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another. ― Adam Smith
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  • The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals. ― Adam Smith
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  • Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness. ― Adam Smith
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  • Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. ― Adam Smith
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  • 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. ― Adam Smith
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  • It is the highest impertinence and presumption… in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. ― Adam Smith
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  • people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. ― Adam Smith
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adam smith quotes power

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

― Adam Smith
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  • To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature. ― Adam Smith
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  • Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty. ― Adam Smith
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  • A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country. ― Adam Smith
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  • The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. ― Adam Smith
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  • Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. ― Adam Smith
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  • He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. ― Adam Smith
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  • Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master. ― Adam Smith
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  • 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. ― Adam Smith
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  • No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. ― Adam Smith
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  • The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. ― Adam Smith
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