Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith– 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher, pioneer of political economy, and a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth5 June 1723
running hurt real
Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.
real improvement natural
It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.
benefits unjust should
It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.
country greatness america
It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest. England is certainly, in the present times, a much richer country than any part of North America. The wages of labour, however, are much higher in North America than in any part of England.
hate party men
A true party-man hates and despises candour.
doubt gold would-be
It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.
government liberty citizens
Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.
secret trade capable
Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.
country party reality
Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.
generations earth absurd
A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.
genius half different
By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound
mean animal two
In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.
kings fighting mind
In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
people attention common
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.